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l^visioQ     S>S  1 1   f  I 

.V53 


THE    RELIGIOUS   VALUE    OF 
THE    OLD    TESTAMENT 


The 
RELIGIOUS  VALUE  e/^ 
the  OLD  TESTAMENT 

in  the  Light  of 
Modern  Scholarship 


BY 


AMBROSE  WHITE  VERNON 

Professor  of  Biblical  Literature  in 
Dartmouth  CoUege 


^ 


New   York 
THOMAS  Y.   CROWELL  &   CO. 

Publishers 


Copyright,  1907, 
By  THOMAS  Y.   CROWELL  &  CO. 

Published,  March,  1907. 


FRANCIS   BROWN 
STEADIER  AND   ENLARGER  OF  HUMAN   LIVES 


For  rigorous  teachers  seized  my  youth, 
And  purged  its  faith,  and  trimmed  its  fire, 

Showed  me  the  high,  white  star  of  Truth, 
There  bade  me  gaze,  and  there  aspire. 

Stanzas  frojn  the  Grande  Chartreiise. 


CONTENTS 


I.     The  Change  of  Attitude  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ......         I 

II.     The  Older  View  of  the  Religious  Value  of 

the  Old  Testament     ....         7 

A.  It  establishes  the  existence  of  God  and 

the  divinity  of  Christ 

B.  It    gives    infallible    direction    to    the 

believer 

III.  Defects  of  this  Older  View .         ...       15 

A.  In  faihng  to  apprehend  Old  Testament 

religion 

B.  In  externalizing  religion 

C.  In  begetting  a  trivial  conception  of  God 

IV.  The  Untenability  of  the  Older  View   .         .       23 

V.     A  Modern  View  of  the  Religious  Value  of 

the  Old  Testament    ....       29 

A.  It  presents  characters  supremely  worthy 

of  reverence 

B.  It  records  the  discovery  of  our  funda- 

mental religious  truths 

C.  It  is  essential  to  a  correct  apprehension 

of  Jesus  Christ 

VI.     Conclusion 79 


THE  RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF 
THE  OLD  TESTAMENT 


THE    CHANGE     OF     ATTITUDE     TO     THE     OLD 
TESTAMENT 

It  is  obvious  that  the  attitude  of  the  educated 
man  to  the  Bible  has  undergone  nothing  less 
than  a  revolution.  Instead  of  the  authori- 
tative pronouncement  of  Deity  through  arbi- 
trarily chosen  instruments,  the  Bible  is  now 
regarded  as  a  great  body  of  literature,  one  part 
di£fering  from  another  part  in  glory.  And  the 
parts  have  been  seen  to  be  of  far  greater  value 
than  the  whole.  As  the  Bible  lies  before  us, 
it  is  a  misleading  book.  Both  in  the  Old  and 
in  the  New  Testaments,  the  historical  frame- 
work   is    untrustworthy.      The    ecclesiastical 


2    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

writers  of  the  Bible  are  no  better  historians 
and  no  more  free  from  prejudice  —  to  use 
no  stronger  word  —  than  ecclesiastical  writers 
generally.  It  is  now  clearly  understood  that 
the  priestly  authors  and  editors  who  are  re- 
sponsible for  the  final  form  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment history,  from  Genesis  to  Chronicles  and 
Ezra,  thoroughly  misconceived  its  movement 
and  its  meaning.  And  I  think  it  is  gradually 
being  felt,  though  not  so  universally  insisted 
upon,  that  the  author  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
has  reproduced  in  somewhat  less  flagrant  man- 
ner the  error  of  the  Old  Testament  ecclesiastics. 
The  ecclesiastical  writers  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment wrote  history  from  the  view-point  of  the 
temple  ritual  and  priesthood,  and  the  author 
of  the  Acts  was  unduly  influenced  in  his  choice 
of  material  by  the  theories  of  the  origin  and 
unity  of  the  Christian  Church,  which  were 
current  in  his  time.  The  result  is  unfortu- 
nate in  two  respects.  In  the  first  place,  the 
really  vital  forces  in  the  history  of  the  Jews 
and  the  great  conflicts  in  the  history  of  the 
Apostolic  Age  are  almost  totally  ignored.     Had 


THE  CHANGE  OF  ATTITUDE  3 

it  not  been  for  the  preservation  of  the  writings 
of  the  prophets  and  of  the  letters  of  Paul,  we 
should  have  been  utterly  unable  to  understand 
the  actual  historical  development  of  the  re- 
ligion of  Israel  and  of  Christianity.  In  the  sec- 
ond place,  the  writers  push  much  too  far  back 
the  establishment  of  the  temple  priesthood  in 
the  one  case,  and  of  churchly  authority  in  the 
other.  In  the  Old  Testament  this  error  of 
the  priestly  writers  is  so  marked  that  even 
were  there  no  similar  tendencies  among  the 
prophetic  school  of  historians,  Wellhausen 
would  be  fairly  justified  in  declaring  that  here 
"we  have  a  religious  history  that  shuts  history 
out." 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  theory  of 
the  Chronicler  of  the  Old  Testament  and  of 
the  historian  of  the  New  Testament,  so  far 
from  being  an  accurate  guidepost  to  the  his- 
torical student,  is  rather  a  protecting  shell 
which  has  to  be  broken  through  to  find  the 
meat.  It  is  just  the  material  which  had  least 
value  to  these  historians  and  which  was  pre- 
served only  through  a  reverence  for  the  past  — 


4   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

such  as  the  ancient  stories  of  David,  tucked  in 
at  the  end  of  Samuel,  the  strong  ringing  strophes 
of  the  minor  prophets,  and  the  parables  of 
Jesus,  preserved  in  Mark  as  examples  of  spir- 
itual mysteries  (!)  —  which  constitute  for  us 
the  most  precious  treasures  of  the  Bible.  And 
so  it  has  come  to  pass  that  the  attention  of  men 
is  being  diverted  from  the  Bible  as  a  whole, 
that  is  to  say  from  the  Bible  as  an  oracle,  to 
the  separate  writings  of  which  it  is  made  up. 

But  it  is  plain  that  the  great  literary  power 
of  the  Bible  will  be  lost  to  us,  unless  its  religious 
power  may  somehow  be  retained.  The  books 
of  the  Bible  which  make  the  strongest  literary 
appeal  are  precisely  those  which  are  epoch- 
making  in  religion.  The  permanence  of  their 
hterary  influence  must  in  the  last  analysis  de- 
pend upon  the  value  of  their  religion.  We 
may  keep  the  Bible  on  a  remote  shelf  of  our 
libraries  in  any  case;  its  historical  interest 
and  significance  assures  that;  but  if  we  are 
to  keep  it  on  our  study  tables,  we  must  believe 
in  and  live  upon  its  religion.  Now  the  por- 
tion of  our  Bible  that  has  seemed  to  be  in  the 


THE  CHANGE  OF  ATTITUDE  5 

greatest  danger  of  being  put  upon  the  shelf 
through  the  influence  of  the  keen  criticism 
of  recent  years  is  the  Old  Testament.  Not- 
withstanding far-reaching  discoveries  in  the 
field  of  New  Testament  criticism,  the  supreme 
character  of  Jesus  has  been  more  and  more 
clearly  recognized  as  the  great  inspiration  of 
mankind,  and  the  first  three  gospels  as  the  most 
immortal  of  books.  We  are  dealing,  then,  with 
what  in  one  aspect  is  the  most  critical  question 
in  regard  to  the  future  of  the  Bible,  if  we  ask 
ourselves  if  modern  research  and  scholarship 
have  destroyed  or  enhanced  the  religious  value 
of  the  Old  Testament. 

For  whether  for  good  or  ill,  it  seems  indis- 
putable that  the  large  results  of  modem  scholar- 
ship have  become  thoroughly  established.  In 
the  more  important  matters  a  striking  agree- 
ment has  been  reached  by  the  leading  bibhcal 
scholars  of  Germany,  England,  and  America. 
It  would  expand  this  essay  into  too  large  a  book 
to  marshal  the  proof  of  even  the  main  con- 
tentions, of  scholars  like  Wellhausen  and  Duhm 
in  Germany,  Robertson  Smith  and  Driver  in 


6   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

England,  George  Moore  and  Henry  Preserved 
Smith  in  our  own  country.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  the  standpoint  of  this  essay  is  the  stand- 
point of  these  men  and  of  the  men  they  repre- 
sent, and  that  its  object  is  to  show  that  the  most 
outspoken  modem  scholarship  ministers  to  our 
rehgious  needs  and  to  the  appreciation  of  the 
supreme  religious  value  of  the  Old  Testament. 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  modern  scholarship 
has  not  altered  our  conception  of  the  religious 
value  as  well  as  of  the  historical  accuracy  of  the 
Old  Testament,  —  we  shall  begin  the  considera- 
tion of  our  subject  by  pointing  out  the  great 
difference  of  view  that  it  necessitates,  —  I  only 
mean  to  say  that  the  gain  far  exceeds  the  ap- 
parent loss. 


n 


THE   OLDER   VIEW    OF     THE     RELIGIOUS    VALUE 
OF   THE   OLD  TESTAMENT 

Let  me  first,  then,  attempt  to  set  forth  the 
chief  rehgious  value  of  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  older  scholarship  and  to  that  scholarship, 
not  as  it  has  been  modified  in  the  last  one  hun- 
dred years,  but  before  biblical  criticism  changed 
its  attitude  of  awe  for  an  attitude  of  sympathy.* 

To  the  older  scholarship  the  Old  Testament 
was  rehgiously  valuable  chiefly  in  two  ways: 
first,  it  served  as  one  of  the  most  important 
proofs  for  the  existence  of  God  and  the  divinity 
of  Jesus  Christ,  and  second,  it  gave  men  infal- 
lible directions  in  regard  to  faith  and  conduct. 
We  must  consider  these  two  great  services  in 
turn. 

We  cannot  follow  in  detail  the  proof  of  the 
existence  of  God  which  the  Old  Testament  af- 

^  Cf.  Martineau,  "  The  Rationale  of  Religious  Inquiry," 
1836. 

7 


8   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

forded  the  fathers,  but  it  was  chiefly  threefold. 
It  consisted  in  the  miraculous  interventions  in 
the  course  of  Jewish  history,  in  the  revelation  of 
future  events  to  the  Jewish  prophets,  and  in  the 
early  and  authoritative  proclamation  of  the  per- 
fect morality.  Some,  if  not  all,  of  the  older 
divines  and  scholars  insist  that  of  these  three 
proofs  the  first  two  are  of  decidedly  greater  value. 
They  point  out  that  they  are  more  distinctly 
divine,  less  open  to  any  human  admixture,  and 
that  they  have  a  wider  appeal.  A  moral  law 
impresses  only  moral  people,  whereas  a  miracle 
convinces  the  wicked  as  well  as  the  good. 
And  certainly  if  it  can  be  estabhshed  that  the 
dew  fell  one  night  on  Gideon's  fleece  and  not 
upon  the  ground,  and  that  the  next  night  it  fell  on 
the  ground  and  not  upon  the  fleece,  and  if  it  may 
be  further  proved  that  it  all  happened  because 
Gideon  asked  God  to  have  it  so,  the  circum- 
stance—  particularly  when  supported  by  many 
other  similar  occurrences — proves  the  existence 
of  God  much  more  easily  than  the  dehvery  of  the 
ten  commandments  to  Moses,  or  certainly  more 
easily  than  the  content  of  the  commandments. 


THE  OLDER  VIEW  9 

The  only  thing  requisite  is  to  be  sure  that 
the  miracles  actually  happened.  Of  this  the 
older  theologians  were  convinced,  because  the 
infallible  Bible  said  so.  And  the  Bible  was 
proven  to  be  an  infalhble  book  by  the  remark- 
able fulfilment  of  its  most  detailed  and  most 
mysterious  prophecies  about  the  future  of 
Israel  and  of  Israel's  foes.  Further,  over  and 
over  again  in  this  book  were  to  be  found  — 
as  in  no  other  with  which  our  fathers  were 
acquainted  —  passages  of  the  highest  spiritual 
quality  introduced  by  the  solemn  "Thus  saith 
the  Lord."  These  passages  naturally  inspired 
reverence  for  the  book  in  which  they  were 
found,  and  from  the  earliest  time  it  was  the 
universal  belief  that  the  very  accounts  of  the 
miracles  themselves  were  from  the  mouth  of 
the  Lord,  written  only  at  the  hand  of  some 
amanuensis.  The  infallible  book  proved  the 
actuality  of  the  miracle,  which  in  turn  proved 
the  existence  and  the  power  of  God. 

The  divinity  of  Christ  also  was  proved,  not 
by  the  words  of  his  mouth  or  the  meditations 
of  his  heart,  but  to  a  very  large  extent  by  the 


lo  RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

Old  Testament  prophecies  of  his  coming. 
It  was,  indeed,  always  felt  that  the  prophecies 
that  concerned  themselves  directly  with  him 
were  meagre  and  hazy,  but  this  very  haze  was 
accounted  to  be  an  evidence  of  that  God  who 
hideth  himself  and  whose  ways  are  not  our 
ways.  A  God  who  could  wipe  out  whole  cities 
at  his  word  and  who  could  tell  Abraham 
the  exact  hour  of  their  destruction  could  be 
mysterious  about  the  sending  of  his  Son  if  he 
so  elected.  There  was  enough  that  was  clear 
to  impress  "the  fickle  and  the  frail,"  and  enough 
that  was  covered  to  necessitate  and  to  repay  the 
theologian.  In  this  latter  category  the  ritual 
occupied  a  prominent  place ;  in  itself  it  had  no 
meaning;  it  was  ridiculous  to  have  so  many 
sacred  pages  filled  with  the  description  of  mere 
temporary  rites;  it  was  the  province  of  the 
theologian  to  prove  that  they  constituted  a  de- 
tailed symbolic  prophecy  of  the  atonement  on 
Calvary.  Hence  there  arose  the  sacred  science 
of  typology,  which  supplemented  the  meagre- 
ness  of  the  direct  Messianic  prophecies.  Side 
by  side  herevdth,  the  theologian  followed  the 


THE  OLDER  VIEW  II 

lead  of  the  writers  of  the  gospels  in  discovering 
numerous  hidden  references  to  Christ  where 
a  casual  reader  would  not  suspect  them.  This 
allegorical  interpretation  of  Scripture  ran  riot 
in  the  early  days  of  the  Church  and  was  in  great 
favor  much  more  recently  than  we  care  to  think. 
It  was  supposed  to  be  a  special  gift  of  the 
Spirit,  who  thereby  enabled  his  favorites  to 
find  the  spiritual  significance  of  seemingly 
secular  events.  Thus  was  much  of  the  Old 
Testament  redeemed  from  its  worldliness  and 
made  tributary  to  the  revelation  of  Christ, 
and  to  the  estabhshment  of  his  deity. 

But  allegorical  interpretation  is  invariably  an 
interpretation  of  an  oracle.  It  was,  therefore, 
but  a  short  step  from  searching  for  hidden 
references  to  Christ  to  searching  for  hidden 
counsel  for  one's  personal  life.  The  historical 
sense  was  completely  ignored,  —  at  first  on  prin- 
ciple, at  length  as  a  matter  of  course.  The 
Bible  became  a  vast  storehouse  of  moral  and 
spiritual  food,  equally  nutritious  for  all  ages, 
and  for  all  circumstances.     Many  a  saint  in 


12  RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

perplexity  would  open  his  Bible  for  direction, 
and  would  twist  the  passage  to  which  he  opened 
until  he  found  the  guidance  he  sought.  And 
even  where  this  was  not  done,  the  "devotional" 
reader  would  be  constantly  expecting  some 
spiritual  refreshment  to  shoot  forth  from  the 
ritual  of  Leviticus  or  the  narratives  of  the  Kings. 
Samson's  riddle  became  only  one  of  a  vast  num- 
ber. The  Old  Testament  became  an  oracle 
like  the  books  of  the  Sibyl  or  the  utterances 
from  Delphi.  Any  one  of  God's  children  could 
hear  him  speak  to  him  personally,  simply  by 
opening  the  pages  of  the  Old  Testament,  or  as 
it  was  preferably  called,  The  Word  of  God. 

It  would  be  utterly  absurd  for  descendants 
of  the  Puritans  to  deny  that  this  conception  of 
the  Old  Testament  had  distinct  rehgious  value. 
It  made  men  certain  of  the  existence  of  God 
and  of  the  divinity  of  Christ.  It  kept  every- 
day life  open  to  the  illumination  of  God's  coun- 
sel. It  held  men  in  the  control  of  God.  It 
cannot  be  gainsaid  that  with  the  weakening 
of  this  conception,  large  numbers  of  men  are 
losing  the  encouragement  and  the  consolation 


THE  OLDER  VIEW  13 

of  religion.  The  old  divines  were  right  in 
saying  that  a  moral  argument  appealed  only 
to  moral  men.  Where  a  man  is  devoid  of 
spiritual  insight,  it  will  be  much  harder  to 
prove  to  him  the  divinity  of  Jesus  from  the 
supremacy  of  his  character  than  from  a  de- 
tailed prophecy  of  his  coming,  death,  and 
resurrection,  hundreds    of   years   before. 

Again,  the  character  of  the  prophets  is  a 
less  direct  proof  of  the  existence  of  God,  and, 
therefore,  of  men's  accountabihty  to  him,  than 
the  staying  of  the  sun  by  Joshua,  or  of  the 
processes  of  a  whale's  digestion  for  Jonah.  It 
would  appear  that  not  only  perfect  love  but 
imperfect  conviction  of  God  casteth  out  fear  of 
him.  It  seems  patent  that  the  absolute  cer- 
tainty of  God  is  passing  away  from  very  large 
numbers  of  men.  The  world  of  Western  civiH- 
zation  appears  to  be  entering  on  a  curious 
epoch.  It  has  been  accustomed  to  irrehgion 
in  the  intellectual  circles;  now  it  seems  that 
irrehgion  is  rather  to  have  its  seat  among  the 
masses.  The  problem  of  the  immediate  past 
has  been  with  the  educated ;  the  problem  of  the 


14  RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

present  is  with  the  indifferent,  because  uncon- 
vinced, laboring  classes.  They  could  find  God 
in  an  infallible  church  or  in  an  oracular  book; 
now  they  "  wander  from  sea  to  sea,"  but  without 
even  "seeking  the  word  of  the  Lord, " — so  sure 
are  they  that  "they  shall  not  find  it."  In  the 
face  of  this  threatening  disaster,  we  are  able 
to  appreciate  the  religious  value  of  the  Old 
Testament  of  the  fathers. 


Ill 

DEFECTS  OF  THIS  OLDER  VIEW 

Before  we  turn  from  the  Old  Testament 
of  our  fathers  to  the  Old  Testament  of  our 
critics,  we  must  in  fairness  point  out  three  seri- 
ous limitations  in  our  fathers'  view.  First, 
the  conception  of  the  Old  Testament  as  the 
inerrant  record  of  the  miraculous  and  the  in- 
fallible oracle  for  all  generations  prevented  men 
from  apprehending  the  actual  religion  of  the 
authors  and  heroes  of  the  Old  Testament. 
Even  in  the  historical  books,  the  search  for  the 
miraculous  bhnded  men's  eyes  to  the  simple 
and  affecting  greatness  of  a  Saul  or  of  a  David 
and  to  their  crude  beliefs  and  fears.  The  signifi- 
cance of  the  demand  of  Elijah  for  the  exclusive 
worship  of  Jehovah,  fraught  with  such  untold 
consequences,  was  quite  overlooked  in  favor 
of  the  cruise  of  oil  and  the  mysterious  chariot 
and  the  wonder-working  mantle. 
IS 


1 6   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

This  defect  is  most  plainly  exhibited  in  the 
estimate  of  the  prophetic  books.  They  were 
valued  almost  exclusively  for  the  predictions 
they  contained.  The  figures  of  the  prophets 
themselves  were  but  slightly  individualized  and 
their  struggles  and  problems  commanded  no 
sympathy;  they  were  hardly  known  to  exist. 
Only  in  very  recent  times  has  it  been  discovered 
that  the  greatest  of  the  prophets  were  poets, 
and  delivered  their  messages  from  Jehovah  in 
lyric  poetry  of  exquisite  beauty  and  of  unparal- 
leled strength.  There  was  a  lamentable  igno- 
rance of  the  very  portions  of  Scripture  which  have 
been  shown  to  be  of  the  highest  literary  power. 
And  as  literature  is  not  only  an  outcome,  but 
in  large  measure  an  index,  of  life,  we  are  forced 
to  suspect  that  the  older  theologians  had  no  real 
understanding  of  Old  Testament  religion.  It 
was  precisely  the  most  vital  parts  of  the  book 
for  which  they  had  no  inner  sympathy.  And 
the  suspicion  is  confirmed  by  the  reconstruction 
of  history  which  modern  criticism  has  made. 
Through  it  we  have  discovered  that  the  creators 
of  the  IsraeHtish  religion  are  not  so  much  Abra- 


DEFECTS  OF  THIS  OLDER  VIEW        17 

ham  and  Moses  as  Amos  and  Hosea  and  Jere- 
miah and  the  unknown  authors  of  Deuteronomy 
and  of  some  of  the  later  chapters  of  the  Book  of 
Isaiah. 

The  prevalent  opinion  among  scholars  is 
that  the  ten  commandments,  instead  of  being 
handed  to  Moses  on  Sinai,  are  the  crystalliza- 
tion of  the  insight  of  the  great  prophets  of 
Israel.  We  have  found  that  what  gave  power 
to  the  strophes  of  Amos  and  Hosea  was  the  sense 
of  declaring  to  Israel  what  they  perhaps  thought 
was  forgotten,  but  what  was  at  any  rate  un- 
known, moral  and  spiritual  truth.  We  have 
learned  that  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament, 
was  neither  the  religion  of  the  Protestant  theo- 
logians nor  even  of  the  New  Testament.  It 
was  in  such  a  constant  state  of  development  that 
to  speak  of  the  rehgion  of  the  Old  Testament 
as  though  it  were  a  fixed  quantity,  is  a  mislead- 
ing use  of  language.  In  reality,  Hebrew  reli- 
gion did  not  become  monotheistic  until  shortly 
before  the  fall  of  Samaria. 

The  only  glimpses  of  immortaHty  in  the  Old 
Testament  come  from  the  two  centuries  pre- 


l8  RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

ceding  Christ,  and  Old  Testament  religion 
never  lost  its  national  character.  For  a  long 
time  its  chief  representatives  sought  God  ex- 
clusively through  ritual  and  the  casting  of  lots, 
worshipped  him  with  the  help  of  images  and 
regarded  national  exaltation  as  his  highest  re- 
ward. Hebrew  rehgion  was  raised  to  its  unique 
place  only  through  the  inner  experiences  of  the 
wonderful  succession  of  men,  of  whose  hearts 
and  hopes  and  lonely,  steadfast  faith  the  theo- 
logians of  the  Reformation  had  no  apprehen- 
sion. The  first  great  defect,  then,  of  the  older 
view  is  its  failure  to  reahze  the  reHgion  of  the 
men  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  thereby  to 
appreciate  that  our  religion  was  the  outcome  of 
centuries  of  struggle  after  God. 

This  emphasis  on  miracle  and  prophecy  on 
the  part  of  our  fathers  made  also  for  the  exter- 
nalization  of  religion.  It  is  indeed  strange  to 
find  emphasis  on  Israelitish  prophecy  making 
for  such  a  result,  but  we  must  remember  that 
prophecy  was  regarded  by  the  old  theologians 
as  prediction.  This  prediction  had  to  do  largely 
with  external  events  that  could  easily  be  verified 


DEFECTS  OF  THIS  OLDER  VIEW       19 

by  the  morally  obtuse.  The  predicters  them- 
selves, moreover,  were  chosen  without  especial 
regard  to  their  moral  attainment,  as  was  pecul- 
iarly evidenced  in  the  case  of  Balaam.  To  have 
faith  in  God  meant  not  to  appropriate  his  hoH- 
ness  but  to  beheve  in  his  existence  and  power. 
It  was  the  fact  rather  than  the  character  of  God 
that  was  of  supreme  importance.  To  beheve  on 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  meant,  not  to  understand 
what  God  intended  man  to  be,  but  rather  to  be 
confident  that  the  worth  of  Christ's  sacrifice 
balanced  our  account  with  the  Almighty.  It 
was  the  cross  rather  than  the  heart  of  Jesus 
that  was  the  centre  of  Christianity.  With  this 
external  view  of  God  and  of  Christ,  it  followed 
that  eternal  life  was  a  mark  of  duration  rather 
than  of  quality.  What  was  acquired  by  this 
intellectual  —  that  is,  external  —  acceptance  of 
God  and  Christ  was  an  assurance  of  pleasurable 
existence  after  death.  In  some  most  rigidly 
orthodox  quarters,  rehgion  became  synony- 
mous with  belief. 

But  the  most  serious  rehgious  defect  in  this 
method  of  regarding  the  Old  Testament  was  the 


20  RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

trivial  conception  of  God  that  went  with  it. 
God  was  supposed  to  have  found  in  an  unchang- 
ing book  a  completely  adequate  medium  for 
revealing  himself  to  men.  He  had  need  of  no 
further  avenue  of  communication.  Spirit  had 
deposited  itself  in  letters.  The  Bible  was 
the  surrogate  of  God.  To  commune  with  the 
Almighty,  let  man  dig  out  the  hidden  meaning  of 
infalHble  words.  A  God  that  was  to  be  found 
in  such  fashion  was  of  necessity  a  trivial  God. 
The  nature  of  the  letters,  moreover,  in  which 
God  had,  as  it  were,  deposited  himself,  in- 
creased the  triviality  of  his  character.  For,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  only  way  in  which  long 
stretches  of  Chronicles  and  the  Song  of  Songs 
and  Leviticus  could  be  considered  worthy  of 
being  the  speech  of  any  God  at  all  was  to  regard 
them  as  conveyers  of  a  hidden  spiritual  mean- 
ing. Even  the  older  theologians  were  sure  that 
for  a  final  and  exclusive  communication  of 
God  to  men,  there  was  too  much  in  the  Old 
Testament  about  buying  wells  and  measur- 
ing altars  and  describing  meats.  Hence  it 
was    generally  assumed    that  these    passages 


DEFECTS  OF  THIS  OLDER  VIEW       21 

were  intended  to  convey  subtle  mysteries 
of  redemption.  This  assumption  not  only 
relieved  the  speech  of  the  Almighty  from 
seeming  lapses,  but  gave  him  back  again 
that  mystery  which  he  had  surrendered  to  the 
clear-cut  letters  of  the  Bible,  and  which  men 
must  needs  feel  about  their  God.  Thus  the 
obscurity  of  his  verbal  revelation  was  made  to 
match  the  obscurity  of  Providence,  and  in  a 
double  sense  he  was  felt  to  be  "a  God  that 
hideth  himself."  But  this  human  method  of 
investing  Jehovah  with  mystery  only  increases 
our  sense  of  his  inadequacy.  He  is  freed  from 
insisting  on  the  exact  measurements  of  furni- 
ture only  by  being  made  a  lover  of  riddles.  His 
message  to  men  was  thought  to  be  more  ade- 
quately conveyed  in  plays  upon  words  than  in 
the  mountains  and  the  stars  or  in  the  heart 
of  man. 

Revelation  was  thus  regarded  as  something 
quite  unnatural  and  unrelated  to  the  currents 
of  the  inner  hfe.  Only  through  artifice  could 
God  reveal  himself  to  his  creatures;  even  his 
Son  must  be  accredited  by  hidden  solutions 


22  RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

of  prearranged  conundrums.  No  wonder  that 
for  the  simple  trustful  reverence  of  Jesus  there 
was  substituted  the  behef  on  the  "mysterious" 
dogma  of  the  Trinity.  No  wonder,  further, 
that  God  was  supposed,  by  processes  akin  to 
magic,  to  reveal  to  men  definite  directions  of  an 
arbitrary  kind  when  they  found  themselves  in 
trifling  perplexities.  Aaron  was  not  allowed 
to  enter  the  holy  of  holies  oftener  than  twice  a 
year ;  even  the  Sibylline  books  on  the  Capitoline 
were  consulted  only  at  explicit  command  of  the 
Senate ;  the  God  of  the  older  theology,  however, 
could  always  be  consulted  through  the  biblical 
oracle  at  all  times,  for  all  causes,  by  all  persons. 
Superstition  easily  usurped  the  place  of  rever- 
ence. The  God  of  an  oracle  is  always  to  be 
preferred  to  no  God  at  all,  yet  he  is  not  a  God 
of  order  but  of  confusion,  and  he  is  far  removed 
from  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  The  greatest  evil  of  an  infallible  Bible 
is  the  worship  of  a  trivial  God. 


IV 

THE   UNTENABILITY   OF   THE   OLDER   VIEW 

But  with  its  good  and  ill  alike,  our  fathers' 
view  of  the  Bible  has  been  found  untenable. 
It  cannot,  of  course,  be  said  to  have  been  actually 
disproved.  There  is  no  possibihty  of  overturn- 
ing by  proof  so  subjective  a  behef  as  the  behef 
in  the  allegorical  interpretation  of  Scripture. 
Every  contradiction,  every  false  statement, 
may  be  set  aside  simply  by  asserting  that  the 
obvious  sense  of  the  passage  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  real  significance  thereof.  But  it  can 
be  said  that,  in  the  light  of  common  sense  and 
science  and  comparative  religion  and  historical 
criticism,  this  method  of  bibhcal  interpretation 
has  been  discarded  by  nearly  all  educated  men. 

Where  this  view  has  been  given  up,  and  men 
have  approached  the  pages  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  discover  the  simple  meaning  of  its 

writers,    it   is   well-nigh   universally   admitted 
23 


24   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

that  the  Bible  is  not  an  infallible  book.  At 
many  an  important  crisis  in  the  history  of  the 
Jews,  different,  and,  in  some  cases,  directly 
conflicting,  accounts  have  been  discovered, 
sometimes  side  by  side,  sometimes  dovetailed 
together  by  an  ancient  and  anxious  editor.  As 
both  of  two  opposing  accounts  cannot  be  true, 
the  theory  of  bibHcal  inerrancy  must  be  aban- 
doned. It  is  only  necessary  to  instance  the 
two  narratives  of  creation  or  of  the  conquest 
of  Canaan  or  of  the  origin  of  the  monarchy 
in  Israel  to  refute  it.  Being  compelled  to  re- 
ject the  infalHbihty  of  the  Old  Testament,  we 
can  no  longer  prove  the  fact  of  the  existence  of 
God  by  the  citation  of  its  miracles.  Unless 
we  have  a  supernatural  record,  we  cannot  be 
sure  of  the  reahty  of  supernatural  events.  It 
has,  moreover,  been  observed  that  the  accounts 
of  the  most  stupendous  biblical  miracles  are 
usually  much  later  —  in  some  important  cases, 
as  in  the  narratives  of  the  Patriarchs  and  of  the 
Exodus,  centuries  later  —  than  the  times  in 
which  these  wonders  are  reported  to  have  oc- 
curred.    Great  providential  deliverances,  such, 


THE  UNTENABILITY  OF  OLDER  VIEW     25 

for  instance,  as  the  deliverance  of  Israel  in  the 
time  of  Hezekiah,  though  they  still  stand  out  in 
all  their  impressiveness,  are  explainable  by 
quite  natural  causes. 

Nor  does  prophecy  come  out  more  unscathed 
from  the  fires  of  modem  historical  criticism.  It 
has  been  found  to  be  essentially  a  forthtelling 
rather  than  a  foretelling.  Not  that  the  element 
of  prediction  is  absent,  —  many  modem  writers 
have  erred  at  this  point, — but  the  prediction  of 
doom  is  based  on  moral  failure,  and  the  predic- 
tion of  glory  on  faith  in  the  love  of  God  and  in 
the  endurance  of  his  kingdom.  In  other  words 
the  predictions  are  expressions  of  the  moral  in- 
sight of  majestic  men  who  spake  as  they  were 
moved,  not  by  a  magic,  but  by  the  Holy,  Ghost. 

Wherever  this  judgment  passes  from  the 
general  to  the  specific,  we  find  unfulfilled,  as 
indisputably  if  not  as  frequently  as  fulfilled, 
prophecy.  It  is  only  necessary  to  mention  the 
predictions  of  the  restoration  and  confederation 
of  the  Northern  and  Southern  Kingdoms  in 
Palestine.^  And  at  the  most  important  point 
^  Hosea  i  ",  Jer.  50*,  Ezek.  37^^  "• 


26    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

of  all,  the  prophetic  argument  is  a  complete 
failure.  It  is  simply  impossible  to  establish 
from  it  the  divinity  and  the  Messiahship 
of  Jesus.  A  careful  study  of  the  Messianic 
prophecy  of  the  Old  Testament  shows  that, 
while  a  small  minority  of  the  prophets  antici- 
pated a  personal  "Messiah,"  no  one  of  them 
anticipated  a  figure  like  that  of  Christ.  The 
only  possible  exception  to  this  statement  is  the 
author  of  the  marvellous  fifty- third  chapter  of 
Isaiah,  but  it  is  probable  that  in  the  "Servant 
of  Jehovah"  he  was  personifying  the  nation  of 
Israel.  Jesus  referred  most  sparingly  to  pre- 
dictions of  himself  in  the  Old  Testament;  it 
was  the  evangelists,  and  more  particularly 
Matthew,  that  made  good  this  omission. 

And  typology,  so  elaborately  developed  and 
systematized,  is  the  weakest  of  all  reeds  to  lean 
upon.  On  the  one  hand,  the  ritual  on  which  it 
is  based  is  found  either  to  be  similar  to  that  of 
the  other  Semitic  nations  or  to  be  borrowed 
from  the  ritual  of  Baal ;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  found  to  have  been  elaborated  in  the  more 
degenerate  times  of  Jewish  history  and  to  have 


THE  UNTENABILITY  OF  OLDER  VIEW   27 

been  one  of  the  chief  objects  of  prophetic  de- 
nunciation. The  best  that  can  be  said  for  the 
ritual  of  the  Old  Testament  in  its  most  de- 
veloped and  purified  form  is  that  it  preserved 
a  great  rehgion  through  times  too  formal  and  too 
worldly  to  appreciate  it.  We  should  regard  the 
"divinely  ordained"  ritual,  not  as  the  highest 
prophecy  of  the  Messiah,  but  rather  —  as  ritual 
always  is  —  as  an  evidence  of  religious  stag- 
nation. Jesus  ignored  it  almost  completely. 
In  his  presence,  anise  and  cummin  ceased  to  be 
important.  It  is  nothing  but  the  simplest  truth 
to  say  that  if  we  were  left  to  the  Old  Testament 
to  prove  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus,  we  should  no 
longer  be  able  to  accept  him  as  our  Lord. 

And  it  perhaps  should  be  added  that  the 
"thus  saith  the  Lord's"  of  the  Old  Testament 
have  lost  in  impressiveness  through  the  discov- 
eries of  the  archaeologists.  We  have  found  the 
king  of  Moab  as  sincerely  believing  in  the 
power  and  direction  of  his  god,  Chemosh,  as 
did  the  Israelite  in  that  of  his  God,  Jehovah. 
There  was  dug  up  but  the  other  day  a  code  of 
laws,  almost  identical  in  some  of   its  statutes 


28   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

with  the  code  of  Moses,  antedating  it  by  over  a 
thousand  years.  The  stone,  moreover,  upon 
which  the  code  is  inscribed,  is  headed  by  a  pic- 
ture of  its  author,  Hammurabi,  either  in  the 
act  of  receiving  the  law  from  his  god,  — in  a  simi- 
lar fashion  to  that  of  Moses, — or  indicating  by 
the  posture  of  worship  that  the  inspirer  of  the 
code  was  a  greater  than  man.  And  so  we  have 
come  to  regard  the  solemn  formula  of  the  proph- 
ets, not  as  an  evidence  of  a  unique  experience, 
but  as  the  expression  of  the  sincere  conviction 
of  honest  men,  whose  conviction  has  been  paral- 
leled frequently,  that  they  were  under  the  guid- 
ance of  Deity.  In  many  other  respects,  illus- 
trated, for  example,  in  the  borrowing  of  the 
material  imderlying  the  stories  of  the  creation 
and  of  the  flood  from  the  Babylonians,  we  find 
the  Old  Testament  to  be  one  of  a  class,  rather 
than  an  absolutely  unique  volume.  It  is  not  the 
only  sacred  book  of  the  nations ;  it  is  simply  the 
sacred  book  of  the  Jews,  which  many  of  us, 
however,  beheve  is  destined  soon  to  be  a  part 
of  the  sacred  book  of  mankind. 


A    MODERN    VIEW    OF    THE    RELIGIOUS    VALUE 
OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT 

Now,  it  is  maintained  both  in  rigidly  ortho- 
dox quarters  and  in  quarters  where  they  spell 
modem  with  a  capital  ''M,"  that  with  this 
abandonment  of  the  infallibility  of  the  Old 
Testament  its  religious  significance  is  ex- 
hausted. And  it  must  be  frankly  admitted 
that  we  can  no  longer  regard  it  as  a  demonstra- 
tion of  the  existence  of  God  to  immoral  men, 
nor  as  a  demonstration  of  the  divinity  of  Christ 
to  those  unattracted  by  his  person.  Nor  is  this 
an  altogether  unmixed  evil.  We  instinctively 
recall  the  words  of  Paul,  the  first  grave  heretic, 
"The  natural  man  receiveth  not  the  things  of 
the  Spirit  of  God,  for  they  are  spiritually  dis- 
cerned," and  the  unequivocal  words  of  Jesus, 
"Why  doth  this  generation  seek  a  sign?  verily 
I  say  unto  you,  There  shall  no  sign  be  given  unto 

this  generation,"  and  again,  "The  kingdom  of 
29 


30    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

God  cometh  not  by  observation."  It  may  prove 
that  the  coming  of  that  kingdom  is  not  so  much 
impeded  as  we  fear  by  the  diminution  of  that 
large  class  v^ho  "believe  and  tremble."  Be 
that  as  it  may,  I  am  very  confident  that  the 
Bible,  and  specifically  the  Old  Testament,  may 
still  with  gratitude  and  reverence  be  hailed  as 
"the  anchor  of  our  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse, 
the  guide,"  in  some  measure  even  "the  guardian 
of  our  hearts."  And,  indeed,  the  relation  of 
the  Old  Testament  to  the  religious  man  is  not 
unlike  the  relation  which  nature  bore  to  the 
rare  soul  of  Wordsworth.  It  is  that  constant 
element  —  objective,  if  you  will  —  of  great 
and  sublime  beauty,  which  suggests  and  inspires 
those  abiding  visions  of  the  Eternal,  which  are 
*'the  soul  of  all  our  moral  being."  It  is  the 
fixed  mountain  peak,  from  which  a  soul,  if  it 
ascend  on  a  clear  day,  may  catch  sight  of  "the 
hills  where  its  fife  rose"  and  a  faint  suggestion 
at  least  "of  the  sea  where  it  goes." 

This  essay  would  sadly  outgrow  its  limits, 
and  overtask  its  author,  should  it  attempt 
to  set  forth  thoroughly  the  religious  values  of 


A  MODERN  VIEW  31 

the  Old  Testament,  which  criticism  has  either 
confirmed  or  uncovered.  It  will  be  best  to 
confine  our  attention  to  three  fundamental  ser- 
vices which  the  Old  Testament,  in  the  modern 
understanding  of  it,  is  destined  to  render  to 
men  of  our  time. 

The  first  great  and  permanent  service  that 
the  Old  Testament  renders  to  a  man  is  that  it 
presents  to  him  personalities  worthy  of  the  pro- 
foundest  reverence.  The  beginning  of  all 
ethical  religion  is  the  awakening  of  reverence. 
This  is  occasioned  by  contact  with  persons  of 
moral  earnestness  and  religious  insight.  For 
all  of  us  our  rehgion  began  with  the  initial 
trust  we  reposed  in  our  parents.  But  both  they 
and  our  personal  friends  are  too  close  to  us  to 
call  out  that  reverence  for  character,  detached 
completely  from  its  worth  to  ourselves,  that  is 
distinctively  rehgious.  The  Old  Testament 
affords  even  the  most  unfortunately  circum- 
stanced among  us  characters  which  are  so  great, 
and  whose  greatness  lies  so  patently  in  their 
relation  to  God,  that  we  are  inevitably  led  to 
ascribe  to  them  supreme  worth.     Of  all  ages 


32    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

and  of  diversest  gifts,  they  stand  out  more  plas- 
tically than  the  apostles  and  more  massively 
than  the  heroes  of  other  races.  It  is  the  patient 
scholarship  of  our  time  that  has  rendered  their 
individuaHties  intelligible  and  self-consistent. 
It  has  set  them  in  their  proper  historical  environ- 
ment and  has  separated  the  later  narratives  of 
their  doings  from  the  earlier  ones.  It  has  made 
plain  to  us  the  greatness  of  these  men.  It  has 
shown  that  greatness  to  consist  in  their  loyalty 
to  the  highest  ideals  of  their  time,  in  the  zeal 
with  which  they  performed  their  divinely  or- 
dered tasks,  and,  above  all,  in  a  religious  insight 
which  enabled  them  to  hve  just  enough  beyond 
their  time  to  lead  it  forward  toward  ours. 
Their  problems  and  their  capacities  have  been 
sufficiently  disclosed  to  us  to  convince  us  that 
God  spoke  to  them  more  plainly  than  he  speaks 
to  us,  but  only  because  they  had  a  greater  faith, 
a  deeper  loyalty  to  right,  and  a  more  unconscious 
devotion  to  their  race  than  we.  There  is  no  rea- 
son why  our  time  should  not  be  as  close  to  God 
as  theirs.  There  is  nothing  that  has  brought 
it  closer  than  this  discovery  of  its  possibilities. 


A  MODERN  VIEW  33 

Out  of  the  large  number  of  men  which  in- 
spire our  reverence,  let  us  take  David  for  an 
example.  Modern  scholarship  has  given  us  the 
background  necessary  to  an  appreciation  of  his 
remarkable  character.  We  shall  never  make 
anything  out  of  David  unless  we  remember  that 
he  belonged  generically  to  Oriental  despots.  He 
had  a  large  harem,  he  cast  lots  superstitiously  in 
the  deciding  of  grave  questions,  he  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  exact  a  bandit's  booty  because  he  had 
kept  his  men  from  stealing  sheep,  he  made  the 
inhabitants  of  conquered  tovms  pass  under  saws 
and  hammers  and  through  the  terrible  brick- 
kiln. He  does  not  satisfy  the  lowest  standards 
of  to-day;  but  if  we  understand  his  time,  he 
comes  before  us  as  nearer  God  than  many  a 
man  of  higher  standards. 

Of  course,  as  long  as  we  conceive  such  a  man, 
so  cruel  and  so  sensual,  to  be  the  author  of  the 
exquisite  twenty-third  Psalm,  it  is  impossible 
to  regard  him  as  self-consistent  or  to  allow  his 
personality  any  save  a  sentimental  influence 
over  our  hves.  His  ode  on  the  death  of  Saul 
gives  us  the  key  to  his  character.     While  it 


34   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

makes  no  explicit  mention  of  Jehovah,  it  re- 
veals a  superb  loyalty  to  a  king  that  unjustly 
sought  his  very  life  and  a  love  passing  that 
of  women  for  the  friend  of  his  youth.  He  did 
not  worship  the  God  of  the  prophets  though  he 
had  the  same  name  for  him ;  he  was  not  capable 
of  so  exalted  a  conception ;  but  his  personality 
did  much  to  create  the  ideals  of  manhood  that 
supported  such  a  conception.  Even  to  this  day 
fraternal  societies  can  find  no  loftier  type  of 
brotherhood  than  his  affection  for  Jonathan, 
nor  Christian  ministers  higher  words  of  con- 
solation to  parents  in  bereavement  than  those 
in  which  this  semi-barbarian  expressed  his 
submission  to  Deity.  His  care  for  his  parents, 
his  decree  that  those  who  stayed  by  the  stufif 
should  share  the  spoil  with  those  that  had  been 
in  the  thick  of  the  fray,  his  unchangeable  affec- 
tion for  the  son  he  knew  was  a  traitor,  —  all 
these  were  the  highest  manifestations  of  the 
virtues  of  his  day. 

But  the  depth  of  his  own  loyalty  led  him  to 
religious  conceptions  in  advance  of  those  of  his 
time.     He  had  the  power  of  discrimination  in 


A  MODERN  VIEW 


35 


ritualistic  values,  so  much  more  important  in 
his  day  than  in  ours.  He  did  not  hesitate  an 
instant  to  cat  holy  bread  to  save  his  life,  or  to 
defy  the  wrath  of  an  angry  plague- sending 
God  for  the  marvellous  mother-love  of  Rizpah ; 
but  he  risked  death  rather  than  slay  the  Lord's 
anointed,  though  a  king  was  something  quite  new 
to  Israel  and  vdthout  any  traditional  sanctity. 
He  had  an  inner  standard  by  which  he  instinc- 
tively tested  the  elements  of  the  religion  of  his 
time.  Perhaps  his  highest  moment  was  when 
he  sent  back  the  sacred  ark  to  Jerusalem,  then 
in  possession  of  his  son,  Absalom,  with  words 
which  seem  to  have  pushed  the  human  race 
leagues  along  in  its  search  for  God:  "Carry 
back  the  ark  of  God  into  the  city ;  if  I  shall  find 
favor  in  the  eyes  of  the  Lord,  he  will  show  me 
again  both  it  and  his  habitation ;  but  if  he  say, 
I  have  no  delight  in  thee,  behold  here  am  I, 
let  him  do  as  seemeth  good  unto  him."  He 
would  not  risk  the  home  of  Jehovah  upon  the 
rectitude  of  his  rule ;  he  still  thought  of  him  as 
residing  in  ark  and  city ;  but  the  consciousness 
of  his  unswerving  loyalty  to  God  led  him  to 


36    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

hope  that  somehow  God,  whose  holiest  dwelHng 
was  with  his  enemy,  would  find  a  way  to  be 
loyal  to  him. 

Thus  was  the  insight  of  his  steadfast  heart 
keen  enough  to  pierce  the  theology  of  centuries 
and  to  break  through  the  weight  of  custom, 
"heavy  as  frost  and  deep  almost  as  hfe."  The 
very  man  who  at  the  beginning  of  his  career 
besought  Saul  to  permit  him  to  stay  in  Judah, 
that  he  might  not  be  cut  off  from  the  only  soil 
upon  which  God  could  be  worshipped,  learned 
through  the  profound  qualities  of  his  own  spirit, 
that  its  God  is  not  confined  to  any  dwelling- 
place  however  sacred  it  be.  It  is  not  theoretical 
speculation,  but  the  experience  of  an  untutored 
barbarian  of  large  heart  and  of  tumultuous  life, 
that  gave  rise  to  the  first  words  that  shine 
with  "the  peace  that  passeth  understanding." 
When  the  modem  man  of  culture  bows  before 
a  hero  of  barbaric  times,  he  has  a  ghmpse  of 
eternal  values. 

Or  take  once  more,  before  we  leave  this  por- 
tion of  our  subject,  the  grandest  personality  of 
the  Old  Testament,  the  prophet  Jeremiah.     I 


A  MODERN  VIEW  37 

wish  there  were  space  to  rehearse  the  story  of 
his  life  as  it  Hes  so  confusedly  but  so  grandly 
outlined  in  his  great  prophecy.  It  is  a  story 
too  subtle,  too  emotional,  too  inwardly  tumul- 
tuous, to  abbreviate  with  success.  I  can  only 
hope  to  direct  some  readers  —  perhaps  under 
the  guidance  of  Duhm  or  Cornill  —  to  an  in- 
telligent study  of  the  prophecy  which,  though 
comphcated  by  additions  from  later  ages,  has 
still  the  power  to  bring  us  into  touch  with  a 
man  in  whom  faith  achieved  one  of  its  most 
notable  victories. 

Jeremiah  was  a  country  priest,  timid  and  de- 
siring sohtude.  "A  lodging  place  for  way- 
farers in  the  wilderness"  was  his  idea  of  hap- 
piness. The  first  part  of  his  hfe  fell  in  the  time 
of  Josiah,  who  was  the  leader  in  one  of  the  most 
radical  religious  revolutions  known  to  history, 
and  yet  we  hear  no  single  word  of  this  from 
Jeremiah.  His  soul  was  untouched  by  it. 
During  its  progress  he  received  his  call  from 
God  through  an  intense  inward  persuasion  of 
the  coming  destruction  of  his  people.  To  a 
people  that  had  passed  through  the  throes  of 


38   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

a  religious  transformation,  and  who  thought 
themselves  reformed,  he  was  constrained  to 
proclaim  the  displeasure  of  God  because  of  their 
ineradicable  iniquity ;  to  a  people  casting  wildly 
about  for  some  means  of  maintaining  their 
independence,  he  proclaimed  that  it  was  Je- 
hovah's will  that  they  should  submit  to  haughty 
Babylon.  It  was  a  message  foredoomed  to 
rejection,  a  message  that  the  utterer  would  fain 
have  left  unspoken,  a  message  that  exposed  the 
messenger  to  continuous  obloquy.  But  it  was 
a  message  that  had  taken  complete  possession 
of  his  soul.  The  only  dim  hope  he  saw  for  his 
people  lay  in  their  readjustment  of  their  na- 
tional ideals  to  the  inevitable,  with  the  immov- 
able conviction  that  God  was  behind  it.  He 
reahzed  the  insuperable  difficulties  of  persuad- 
ing a  self-satisfied  populace  to  rise  to  a  faith 
so  heroic  and  so  indefinite.  But  he  regarded 
himself  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  Almighty. 
He  was  beyond  his  own  control.  From  the  call 
to  deliver  such  a  message  he  shrank  at  the  out- 
set, but  he  was  over-mastered  by  the  Omnipo- 
tent.    "O  Lord,"  he  cries,  "thou  hast  enticed 


A  MODERN  VIEW  39 

me  and  I  was  enticed ;  thou  art  stronger  than  I 
and  hast  prevailed."  He  excuses  his  course  to 
his  diary  thus,  "If  I  say,  I  will  not  make  men- 
tion of  him  nor  speak  any  more  in  his  name, 
then  there  is  in  my  heart  a  burning  fire  shut 
up  in  my  bones  and  I  am  weary  with  forbearing 
and  can  no  longer  be  still."  So  with  eyes  open 
to  the  consequences  and  with  a  heart  open  to 
God,  he  proclaimed,  in  season  and  out  of  season, 
his  message  of  gloom.  When  the  nation  was  at 
peace  and  gathered  for  worship,  when  the  king 
was  plotting  with  Egypt  against  the  Babylonian 
inevitable,  when  the  very  armies  of  Bablyon 
surrounded  the  city  and  the  whole  populace 
was  aroused  for  its  defence,  in  his  native  town, 
in  private  before  the  weak  and  unstable  Zede- 
kiah  or  among  his  two  or  three  disciples,  in 
public  in  the  very  guard  room  where  the  sol- 
diers were  preparing  for  war  against  the  Baby- 
lonian advance,  —  everywhere  and  at  all  times 
he  thundered  forth  his  message.  Over  and  over 
he  was  arrested,  imprisoned,  made  fast  in  the 
stocks ;  once  he  was  thrown  into  the  lowest  dun- 
geon to  sink  in  the  mire ;  for  a  long  period  he 


40   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

was  threatened  with  death  by  his  own  towns- 
men. Through  all  contumely  he  remained 
steadfast.  At  last,  as  he  had  predicted,  the 
arms  of  Babylon  were  successful;  and  the  con- 
querers,  on  hearing  of  his  course,  treated  him 
with  marked  distinction.  While  his  revilers 
received  the  due  reward  of  their  deeds,  the 
man  who  had  done  nothing  amiss  was  offered 
a  career  of  prominence  in  Babylon. 

But  the  prophet  refused  to  believe  that  the 
enjoyment  of  such  luxury  and  repose  was  the 
purpose  of  his  vindication.  Turning  his  back 
unhesitatingly  on  all  such  preferment,  with  great 
joy  he  undertook  to  hve  in  Palestine  with  a  rem- 
nant of  Israel  which  was  not  worth  the  while  of 
Babylon  to  deport,  but  from  which  he  expected 
to  see  the  new  Israel  arise.  His  hope,  however, 
was  short-hved.  The  new  Babylonian  governor 
of  Palestine  was  murdered  by  a  fanatic.  Fear- 
ing that  the  crime  would  be  laid  to  their  charge, 
the  Jews  of  Palestine,  thoroughly  terrified,  sent 
a  delegation  to  Jeremiah,  whom  events  had 
accredited  as  a  true  prophet,  to  receive  the 
word  of  God.    After  many  days  of  waiting, 


A  MODERN  VIEW  41 

they  received  from  him  the  message  God  had 
finally  vouchsafed;  they  should  remain  in  the 
land  of  Jehovah  and  trust  in  his  protection. 
Their  fears  had  increased,  however,  during  the 
delay,  and  in  spite  of  the  counsel  of  Jeremiah, 
they  moved  out  in  solid  ranks  to  that  Egypt 
which  had  constantly  lured  them  to  ruin. 

The  new  Judea  for  which  he  had  toiled  and  in 
which  he  had  believed  was  not  to  be.  The  men 
of  Israel  may  have  hoped  that  vdth  a  favora- 
ble Egyptian  alliance  their  independence  might 
be  restored.  Or  they  may  have  abandoned 
all  ambition  for  the  sake  of  comfortable  living 
in  Egypt.  In  any  case  they  were  more  inter- 
ested in  themselves  than  in  righteousness.  But 
even  with  this  outlook,  the  prophet  was  true 
to  his  message.  He  went  in  duress  with  these 
people  to  Egypt  rather  than  as  governor  of 
others  to  Babylon.  The  last  glimpse  we  have 
of  him  is  of  a  man  prophesying  in  Egypt 
the  universal  sway  of  Babylon  as  a  part  of  the 
plan  of  Jehovah.  He  was  faithful  unto  death, 
a  death  so  obscure  that  its  time  and  place  are 
unknown.     But  from  him  the  world  learned 


42    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

what  every  attentive  reader  of  his  book  still 
feels,  the  unmatched  grandeur  of  faith  in  per- 
formance of  a  duty  whose  utihty  is  hidden 
from  men's  eyes. 

It  is  difficult  to  overestimate  the  effects  in  the 
history  of  the  inner  life  of  mankind  that  rever- 
ence for  the  character  of  Jeremiah  has  pro- 
duced. The  truth  of  his  insight  and  the  nobihty 
of  his  faith  so  impressed  the  Jews  that  his  words 
were  carefully  preserved  as  words  of  Jehovah. 
In  their  own  despite,  they  canonized  a  man  who 
proved  to  them  that  faith  has  its  reward  in  the 
heart  and  not  in  the  market.  More  and  more 
through  the  centuries  of  disappointment  they 
were  drawn  to  him  as  the  incarnation  of  the 
Jewish  spirit.  More  and  more  they  revered  a 
faith  so  instinctive  and  so  majestic  that  it  asked 
for  nothing  but  God.  It  is  recorded  that  one 
of  the  greatest  of  the  Maccabean  victories  was 
won  through  a  vision  in  which  he  was  seen 
handing  the  sword  to  their  leader.  It  is  not 
unlikely  that  he  may  have  been  in  the  thoughts 
of  the  author  of  the  book  of  Job;  and  some 
modern  scholars  believe  that  he  was  the  model 


A  MODERN  VIEW  43 

for  the  picture  of  the  Servant  of  Jehovah  in 
the  immortal  fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah.^  It 
seems  incredible  that  Jesus,  who  knew  and  ap- 
pUed  to  himself  a  prophecy  of  Isaiah,  should 
not  have  had  his  mission  made  clear  to  him  by 
those  words  which  helped  many  men  in  the  first 
centuries  to  receive  him  as  the  Messiah :  — 

"  Surely  he  bore  our  griefs, 
And  carried  our  sorrows: 
Yet  we  did  esteem  him  stricken, 
Smitten  of  God  and  afflicted. 

"  But  he  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions, 
He  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities: 
The  chastisement  of  our  peace  was  upon  him; 
And  with  his  stripes  we  are  healed. " 

It  is  then  by  no  means  impossible  to  connect 
Jeremiah  with  Calvary;  and  we  are  not  as- 
tonished to  find  that  Jesus  was  mistaken,  by 
one  who  revered  him  greatly,  for  the  prophet 
Jeremiah,  risen  from  the  dead. 

If  any  one  wants  to  receive  the  grace  of  hu- 
mihty,  "the  highest  virtue,  mother  of  them  all," 
and  to  recover  the  fading  glory  of  reverence,  I 

^  Cf.,  for  example,  Cornill,  "Das  Buch  Jeremia,"  1905. 


44   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

know  no  surer  method  than  by  Hving  in  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Old  Testament,  with  men  Hke 
Moses  and  Isaiah,  Barak  and  Ehjah,  David 
and  Jeremiah,  with  men  who  convince  us  that 
the  noblest  character,  both  in  modern  and  in 
ancient  times,  is  that  which  tremblingly  con- 
fesses that  it  is  the  product  of  the  Spirit  of  God. 
The  two  men  of  whom  I  have  written  are,  of 
course,  far  too  great  for  my  words  to  actualize. 
But  no  man  of  moral  perception  and  of  spiritual 
longing  can  study  for  six  months  the  books  of 
Samuel  or  the  prophecies  of  Jeremiah  without 
getting  a  new  heart  or  at  least  a  new  song. 

This  transcendent  service  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, in  presenting  to  us  personalities  that  in- 
cite profound  reverence,  is  as  enduring  as  virtue 
and  is  utterly  independent  of  changing  scientific 
and  philosophical  views. 


The  second  permanent  religious  service  that 
the  Old  Testament  renders  mankind  is  to 
record  the  discovery  of  the  most  fundamental 
truths  of  our  religion. 


A  MODERN  VIEW  45 

The  modern  study  of  history  has  shattered 
two  widespread  notions  of  the  origin  of  rehgion. 
The  older  of  these  held  that  God  revealed  in 
the  centuries  between  Adam  and  Moses  the 
entire  content  of  religion.  The  main  signifi- 
cance of  Christ  was  that  he  revealed  more  clearly 
and  in  final  form  what  had  been  in  the  minds  of 
the  Patriarchs  and  of  Moses,  The  primitive 
practices  of  the  period  of  the  Judges  and  of 
great  heroes  like  Gideon  and  David  were  either 
not  clearly  understood  —  fixed  ideas  are  opaque 
glasses  through  which  to  read  history  —  or  ex- 
plained as  wilful  departures  from  the  ethical 
monotheism  of  the  primitive  times.  It  is  only 
quite  recently  that  the  discovery  has  been  made 
that  the  reason  for  a  higher  conception  of  God 
in  parts  of  Genesis  than  in  parts  of  Samuel  lies 
in  the  fact  that  they  were  written  later.  Our 
fathers  are  not  to  be  blamed  for  their  opinions. 
They  were  but  following  the  lead  of  the  Hebrew 
editors  of  the  Pentateuch,  who  themselves 
credited  the  patriarchs  with  the  conceptions  of 
the  prophets  and  of  Ezia.  They  were  sure  that 
the  omnipotent  God  would  not  have  withheld 


46    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

from  his  favorites  the  subhme  truths  which 
these  editors  assumed  them  to  be  capable  of 
grasping.  But  it  has  now  been  conclusively 
proven  that  the  Hebrew  religion,  which  we  have 
inherited,  is  a  product  of  long  development 
rather  than  a  revelation  to  three  or  four  men  at 
the  dawn,  or  before  the  dawn,  of  history. 

The  other  theory  of  religion  that  has  been 
shattered  Hes  embedded  in  the  phrase  "Natural 
Rehgion"  and  has,  perhaps,  its  most  conspicu- 
ous representative  in  the  person  of  Rousseau. 
It  is  the  theory  held  in  common  by  the  Deists 
of  England  and  by  the  theologians  of  the  Ger- 
man Aufklarung.  It  postulated  that  a  right- 
eous and  merciful  God,  a  high  sense  of  moral 
obhgation,  and  the  hope  of  immortahty  were 
the  property  of  mankind  at  creation ;  that,  while 
not  given  by  special  revelation,  as  the  older  the- 
ologians surmised,  they  were  an  inaUenable  part 
of  the  constitution  of  the  race.  To  recover  the 
true  religion,  it  was  necessary  only  to  remove  the 
debris  of  history  and  disclose  the  heart  of  primi- 
tive man.  But  an  inteUigent  study  of  the  He- 
brew Scriptures  alone  is  enough  to  show  that 


A  MODERN  VIEW  47 

this  is  utterly  false.  The  hope  of  immortality 
is  clearly  a  late  conception  among  the  Jews, 
and  the  sublime  Jehovah  of  the  prophets  was 
as  unknown  to  Samson  as  to  Agamemnon. 

Our  God  is  a  Being  gradually  discovered  by 
the  tremendous  struggles  of  the  men  whose  Uves 
and  whose  glorious  enthusiasm  on  emergence 
into  the  light  the  Old  Testament  alone  of  all 
books  describes.  This  is  the  reason  why  the 
Old  Testament  will  endure  and  will  be  indis- 
pensable in  the  creation  of  character  forever. 
No  rehgious  truth  can  be  grasped  by  the  intel- 
lect. To  be  discovered  in  its  essential  grandeur, 
it  must  be  seen  by  the  eyes  of  the  heart.  It  is 
only  the  Old  Testament  that  enables  us  to 
appreciate  the  moral  worth  of  the  truths  of  our 
religion,  because  only  through  it  may  we  enter 
into  the  enthusiasm  and  witness  the  moral 
transformation  of  those  majestic  souls  who  dis- 
covered these  truths. 

Let  us  take,  for  example,  the  sovereignty  of 
God.  We  take  it  for  granted  and  fancy  we 
understand  its  significance.     But  until,  through 


48   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

the  mediation  of  the  Old  Testament,  we  stand 
close  by  the  man  who  made  it  the  eternal  prop- 
erty of  the  race,  we  no  more  understand  its 
supporting  pillars  and  its  tremendous  propor- 
tions than  the  foolish  Israelites  of  the  court  of 
Jeroboam  II.  They  beHeved  in  the  power  of 
Jehovah.  Under  Jeroboam  their  country  had 
advanced  very  greatly  in  extent  and  power. 
The  court  was  full  of  prophets  who  assured  them 
of  the  approach  of  the  Day  of  Jehovah,  in  which 
Israel  should  rule  over  the  proud  kingdoms 
that  had  oppressed  them  and  Jehovah  over  the 
boasting  gods  of  the  nations.  They  beHeved 
in  the  might  of  Jehovah  because  it  was  tradi- 
tional to  believe  therein  and  because  recent 
events  in  history  gave  color  to  such  behef.  So 
we  may  beUeve  in  the  sovereignty  of  God  be- 
cause we  read  it  in  the  creeds  and  because  there 
are  certain  mental  and  historical  facts  that  bear 
it  out.  But  until  we  have  joined  the  crowd  over 
which  Amos,  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  dis- 
coverer, thundered  forth  the  truth,  until  we 
have  been  mastered  by  the  majesty  of  his  soul, 
and  entered  wonderingly  into  sympathy  with  his 


A  MODERN  VIEW  49 

sublime  revelation,  we  do  not  understand  the 
sovereignty  of  God.  Before  Amos,  the  Old 
Testament  is  the  book  of  God ;  after  him,  it  is 
the  book  of  Almighty  God.  Before  him,  it  was 
the  great  record  of  men  striving  to  find  a  holy 
God ;  after  him  it  is  the  record  of  men  who  had 
found  him.  The  Old  Testament  after  Amos 
is  rocked  and  swayed  by  the  colossal  discovery 
of  that  moral  world  that  is  created  by  the  idea 
of  the  Unity  of  God.  He  is  the  first  prophet 
whose  words  have,  some  of  them,  come  to  us 
in  their  original  form.  The  crashing  thunder- 
ous numbers  of  Hebrew  prophecy  seem,  there- 
fore, quarried  from  the  soul  of  the  man  who 
rose  to  such  a  conception  of  the  holiness  of  Je- 
hovah that  he  was  forced  to  give  over  the  whole 
world  to  his  rule.  To  the  Israelites  reposing  in 
their  sole  election  by  Jehovah  he  announces : 

"  You  alone  have  I  known  of  all  the  tribes  of  the  earth, 
Therefore  from  you  will  I  have  satisfaction  for  all 
your  iniquities." 

To  the  men  who  granted  Jehovah  some  power 
in  nature,  he  proclaimed :  — 


50    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

"  For  Adonai  Jahveh  of  Hosts  — 
He  toucheth  the  earth  and  it  melteth 
And  all  its  inhabitants  mourn ; 
He  buildeth  his  chambers  in  heaven 
And  foundeth  his  vault  upon  earth; 
For  the  waters  of  ocean  he  calleth 
And  poureth  them  over  earth's  surface; 
Jahveh  is  his  name."  ^ 

Irritated  beyond  poetic  measure  by  the  arro- 
gance of  the  provincials,  Amos  in  the  midst  of 
his  glorious  wrath  gives  birth  to  absolute  mono- 
theism in  that  stinging  sentence:  "Are  ye  not 
as  the  Ethiopian  children  to  me,  ye  children 
of  Israel?  Have  I  not  brought  up  not  only 
Israel  from  Egypt,  but  also  the  Phihstines  from 
Caphtor  and  the  Syrians  from  Kir?"  I  am 
the  God  of  your  enemy  as  well  as  of  yourselves. 
What  was  it  in  the  soul  of  this  man  that 
startled  the  earth  into  a  new  epoch  and  eventu- 
ally gave  the  world  to  his  God  ?  Who  shall 
say  ?  But  that  it  was  moral  splendor  that  was 
the  creator  of  this  reHgious  faith,  these  words 

*  I  have  not  seen  my  way  clear  to  subscribe  to  the 
almost  universal  opinion  that  the  "  Nature-Poems "  of 
Amos  are  later  interpolations. 


A  MODERN  VIEW  51 

reveal,    poured   forth  to  a  very  religious  folk 
in  the  midst  of  their  ceremonies :  — 

"Woe  to  those  eager  for  the  Day  of  Jahveh! 
What  is  it  to  you,  that  Day  of  Jahveh? 
That  Day  shall  be  darkness;  it  shall  not  be  light, 
Yea,  sunless  gloom,  and  not  glittering  splendor! 

"  Your  feasts  I  hate,  I  despise. 
Your  festal  assemblies  I  loathe. 
The  noise  of  thy  songs  remove. 
Thy  harp-music  let  me  not  hear: 
As  waters  let  justice  run  down, 
Uprightness  as  a  stream  never  failing." 

Monotheism  could  arise  only  from  a  perfectly 
unified  experience  that  felt  about  it  the  con- 
straint of  the  inevitable.  The  only  pillars  that 
can  carry  so  tremendous  a  structure  as  mono- 
theism are  moral  monoliths.  And  it  tolerates 
no  others.  Amos  was  the  spiritual  father  of 
Kant.  The  philosopher  set  himself  to  the 
demohtion  of  the  arguments  of  the  metaphysi- 
cians for  the  existence  of  God  because  he  saw 
that  they  were  incapable  of  so  great  a  task. 
Then  upon  the  imperative  of  his  moral  nature 
he  built  again  the  walls  to  carry  the  faith  of 
humanity.     But  in  so  doing  he  was  only  revert- 


52    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

ing  to  Amos,  who,  ignorant  of  the  arguments 
that  Kant  discarded  and  a  stranger  to  the  long 
centuries  of  moral  endeavor  that  produced  the 
philosopher,  found  God,  twenty-five  hundred 
years  earlier,  just  as  confidently  out  of  the 
strength  and  imperiousness  of  his  vision  of 
righteousness.  Although  he  did  not  know  it, 
the  greatest  of  philosophers  was  but  confirming 
the  discovery  of  the  first  great  Hebrew  prophet. 
To  apprehend  monotheism  we  must  reaHze 
the  sohdity  of  the  foundation  stones  on  which 
it  is  builded,  and  these  lie  disclosed  in  no  la- 
boriously wrought  system  of  thought,  but,  fresh- 
hewn  and  rugged,  only  in  the  strophes  of  the 
book  of  the  prophet  Amos. 

Take  once  more  —  for  we  can  only  touch  the 
borders  of  our  vast  subject  —  the  conception 
of  the  love  of  God.  No  more  than  the  sov- 
ereignty of  God  was  it  the  property  of  man 
either  by  nature  or  by  revelation  at  the  outset. 
Like  that  conception,  it  had  a  long  prenatal  his- 
tory in  the  womb  of  the  race.  But  like  that 
also,  it  came  into  life  at  one  point  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  religion.    And  that  point  is  to  be 


A  MODERN  VIEW  53 

found  not  in  the  speculations  of  the  theologian, 
not  in  the  ritual  of  the  temple,  not  in  the  rap- 
ture of  spring-time  nor  in  the  common  joy  of 
harvest,  but  in  the  heart  of  a  man  who  was 
made  a  prophet  by  the  persistence  of  his  love 
for  a  faithless  wife.  For  not  as  an  allegory, 
whose  rise  would  then  be  unexplainable,  but  as 
the  most  literal  fact,  do  I,  in  company  with 
many  modern  writers,  regard  the  pathetic  story 
of  the  prophet  Hosea. 

In  the  company  of  Hosea,  we  do  not,  in  the 
phrase  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  have  to  practise  the 
presence  of  God.  Released  from  our  own 
imaginations  and  from  all  mystical  exercises 
of  our  spirits,  we  immediately  are  ushered  into 
the  audience  room  of  the  Eternal.  Living  in 
the  same  great  eighth  century  before  Christ,  a 
younger  contemporary  of  Amos,  he  caught  the 
righteousness  of  the  earher  prophet  to  his  heart 
and  warmed  it  there  with  love.  In  Hosea,  the 
deepest  personal  grief  of  man  becomes  the 
means  of  creating  the  conception  of  a  righteous 
God,  who  loves  sinners.  Hosea  was  not  the 
first  man  who  had  an  unfaithful  wife,  nor  the 


54    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

first,  who,  after  discovering  her  unfaithfulness, 
still  loved  her  with  jealous  and  animal  devotion. 
But,  so  far  as  we  know,  he  was  the  first  who 
loved  so  impure  a  woman  with  so  pure  an 
affection.  Hosea  did  not  cast  off  Gomer  as 
King  Arthur  did  Guinevere.  His  love  refused 
to  let  her  go.  Through  the  long  years  of  her 
harlotry  he  pursued  her,  and,  when  all  her  gay 
lovers  had  forsaken  her,  he  took  her  into  his 
home,  buying  her  in  open  market  as  a  slave. 
And  after  all  is  done  and  the  inevitable  redemp- 
tion accomphshed,  this  humble  victor  out  of  the 
profound  depths  of  his  life  perceives  his  love  to 
be  a  symbol  of  God's  own.  Hosea  is  forced 
mth  joy  to  confess  that  his  love  for  Gomer  is 
no  more  patient  and  certainly  can  be  no  more 
triumphant  than  Jehovah's  for  Israel.  It  is 
a  misfortune  that  the  prophecies  of  Hosea  have 
come  to  us  in  so  corrupt  a  text  and  weighted 
down  with  so  many  additions.  But  every  now 
and  then  a  few  lines  of  exquisite  beauty  are 
revealed.  The  second  chapter  of  the  book, 
though  sadly  marred,  is  full  of  the  lyrical  ten- 
derness we  might  expect  in  the  poem  which  is 


A  MODERN  VIEW  55 

the  record  of  man's  discovery  of  the  change- 
less love  of  God.  Mindful  of  the  way  of  his 
own  love,  he  reveals  God's  method  of  redeem- 
ing Israel  in  words  which  he  does  not  hesitate 
to  lay  in  the  very  mouth  of  God  himself. 

"Behold,  I  will  hedge  her  way  with  thorns 
And  fence  her  about  with  walls 
So  that  she  may  not  find  her  paths. 
She  shall  pursue  her  lovers, 
But  she  shall  not  overtake  them. 
In  vain  shall  she  seek  them. 
Then,  behold,  I  will  allure  her, 
I  will  lead  her  to  the  wilderness, 
I  will  speak  home  to  her  heart, 
And  there  will  I  give  her  vineyards. 
The  vale  of  Achor  as  a  gate  of  hope. 
As  in  her  youth  will  she  answer  me, 
As  in  the  days  when  she  came  out  of  Egypt." 

Hosea  is  not  content  with  the  revenge  of 
the  Almighty ;  his  love  has  taught  him  the  emp- 
tiness of  such  a  victory  as  Amos  would  have 
God  win ;  he  is  content  with  nothing  less  than 
redemption,  and  knowing  that  love  cannot  de- 
grade, he  sets  forth  God  as  the  wooer  of  shame- 
less Israel.  Thus  doth  human  love  reveal  its 
right  in  the  holy  of  holies.     The  lot  of  Hosea 


56    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

was  cast  in  evil  times,  and,  like  all  the  prophets, 
he  is  forced  to  denunciation ;  but  through  all 
the  attacks  on  idolatry  and  iniquity  in  the  re- 
mainder of  the  book  we  find  the  plaintive  note 
recurring  again  and  again.  It  is  thus  that  the 
Almighty  utters  himself :  — 

"  When  Israel  was  a  child,  then  I  loved  him ; 
It  was  I  that  taught  him  to  walk ; 
I  took  him  in  my  arms. 

"  How  can  I  give  thee  up,  Ephraim, 
How  shall  I  abandon  thee,  Israel? 
How  make  of  thee  an  Admah? 
How  let  thee  share  Zeboim's  fate? 
My  heart  is  changed  within  me. 
My  compassions  are  kindled  together. 
I  will  not  act  in  burning  wrath ; 
I  will  not  set  out  to  destroy  Ephraim. 
For  God  am  I  and  no  man. 

"  I  will  heal  their  faithlessness, 
I  will  love  them  freely." 

Here  we  may  feel  something  of  the  wonder 
and  the  transport  that  dwelt  in  the  man  whose 
love  for  a  woman  was  so  holy  that  he  started 
a  whole  race  on  its  great  journey  to  the  heart  of 
God.     Only  as  a  man  stands  by  the  wondering 


A  MODERN  VIEW  57 

prophet  can  he  grasp  the  significance  of  believ- 
ing in  the  love  of  God. 

Amos  and  Hosea  are  conspicuous,  but  after 
all  typical,  examples  of  the  service  of  the  Old 
Testament  in  revealing  to  men  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  the  essential  elements  of  our  reli- 
gion. And  even  where  the  great  conceptions 
—  for  they  are  not  many  —  do  not  come  to  such 
unique  expression  out  of  the  lips  of  distinct 
individuals,  the  religious  reader  is  continually 
conscious  of  moving  in  creative  times.  The 
Old  Testament  introduces  us  to  the  beginnings 
of  personal  communion  with  God.  This  is 
harder  to  trace  than  the  birth  of  the  great  truths 
of  the  sovereignty  and  love  of  God.  While 
it  is  true  that  adumbrations  of  these  ideas  are 
to  be  found  in  many  parts  of  the  Bible,  they 
may  be  said  to  have  emerged  into  the  light  out 
of  the  experience  of  the  prophets  Amos  and 
Hosea. 

But  it  is  somewhat  hard  to  say  when 
an  Israelite  first  approached  God  for  himself 
instead  of  for  his  nation  or  as  a  part  of  his  na- 
tion.    It  is  easy  to  see  that  at  the  beginning  of 


58   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

Israelitish  history  religion  was  a  national  thing ; 
in  spite  of  the  curious  endeavors  of  some  critics, 
it  is  clear  that  in  the  Psalter  religion  is  an  indi- 
vidual thing.  It  may  indeed  be  that  this  ten- 
dency never  fully  revealed  itself  until  Jesus 
came,  but  that  it  had  begun  in  Old  Testament 
times  is  evident.  In  the  earliest  Hebrew  song 
that  has  come  to  us,  —  the  "song  of  Deborah," 
—  we  find  individuals  singled  out  for  remem- 
brance before  Jehovah  for  their  services  to  his 
people  in  war.  The  grotesque  Samson  defi- 
nitely calls  upon  Jehovah  for  aid  in  overthrow- 
ing the  pillars  that  uphold  the  temple  of  the 
Phihstines.  He  seems  thus  early  to  have  dis- 
pensed with  oracle  and  image  and  priest  in 
converse  with  his  God.  But  we  must  remember 
that  there  are  grave  doubts  as  to  the  meaning 
and  historicity  of  the  story  of  Samson,  even 
should  we  not  share  these  doubts  ourselves. 
In  any  case  it  is  to  be  noted  that  Samson  called 
upon  Jehovah  as  the  national  God  to  aid  him  in 
a  deed  that  would  avenge  his  people.  But 
with  David  we  come  upon  one  whose  individ- 
uality was  so  powerful  that  he  called  upon  Jeho- 


A  MODERN  VIEW  59 

vah,  not  merely  for  aid  in  national  crises,  but 
for  relief  in  his  own  personal  sorrows.  It  is 
true  that  in  national  concerns  he  employed  a 
priest  to  consult  a  tenderly  prized  oracle  to 
discover  the  issues  of  war.  In  his  pursuit  by 
Saul,  too,  his  actions  were  governed  by  the  out- 
come of  Abiathar's  consultation  of  the  ephod ; 
but  at  least  twice  the  need  of  his  heart  was  so 
great  that  he  dared  to  ignore  all  priestly  sentries 
in  his  approach  to  the  presence  of  his  God.  He 
loved  a  child  so  much  that  he  prayed  and  fasted 
many  days  in  the  hope  that  Jehovah  would  spare 
its  life,  evidently  not  for  the  sake  of  Israel,  but  for 
the  sake  of  his  love.  And,  although  he  danced 
before  the  ark  on  its  return  to  Jerusalem  be- 
cause he  believed  that  he  was  then  dancing  before 
Jehovah,  we  nevertheless  find  him  beheving 
that  God  would  save  his  life,  if  he  so  pleased, 
even  though  the  ark  was  in  the  possession 
of  his  enemy.  It  appears  therefore  that,  at  the 
great  crises  of  his  Hfe,  he  felt  that  neither  God 
nor  he  was  bound  by  ecclesiastical  machinery.^ 

^  It  must  be  recognized,  however,  that  no  actual  prayer  of 
his  has  been  preserved,  and  that  the  phrase  in  2  Samuel  12^*, 


6o   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

In  the  story  of  Elijah,  again  of  uncertain  date 
and  embelHshed  with  legendary  additions,  we 
find  that  its  author  believed  Jehovah  to  be  con- 
cerned about  the  life  of  the  prophet,  and  that  he 
thought  it  natural  for  the  prophet  to  beseech 
God  to  make  good  to  a  woman  the  kindness 
she  had  shown  him.  But  with  Jeremiah, 
the  personal  communion  of  God  enters  on 
a  deeper  phase.  He  does  not  simply  beseech 
God  for  his  Hfe.  He  throws  himself  upon 
God  and  pours  out  his  soul  before  him.  Well- 
hausen  is  not  far  wrong  when  he  says:  "In 
the  midst  of  his  pain  and  agony,  there  arose 
the  certainty  of  his  personal  communion  with 
the  Deity ;  the  deepest  essence  of  personal  reli- 
gion was  set  free  through  him.  He  is  the  father 
of  true  prayer  in  which  the  frail  soul  expresses 
its  less  than  human  ^  misery  and  its  more  than 
human  confidence."  ^  He  bears  the  indignities 
from  his  people  and  scorns  the  treasures  that 

"  he  besought  God  for  the  child,"  may  not  be  meant  as 
spiritually  as  we  suppose ;  he  may  even  then  have  besought 
him  through  an  ephod. 

'  Untermens Miches. 

^  "  Israelitische  and  Jiidische  Geschichte,"  1901,  p.  147. 


A  MODERN  VIEW  6i 

have  blinded  their  eyes,  in  order  that  he  may 
still  hear  the  speech  of  God.  He  is  the  first 
Israelite  whose  personal  prayers,  written  by 
himself  in  the  midst  of  his  prophecies  for  the 
nation,  have  come  down  to  us.  He  laments 
his  loneliness  and  his  fate,  evidently  feels  the 
distinction  between  himself  and  his  people, 
and  apparently  intercedes  for  them.  His  soul 
is  so  completely  filled  with  the  majesty  of  being 
the  mouthpiece  of  God  that  he  cannot  but  pour 
out  his  complaints  before  him.  And  we  feel 
that  from  these  outpourings  of  soul  he  goes  back 
to  his  task  strengthened  and  uphfted. 

Yet  communion  is  still  imperfect.  There 
is  no  real  joy  in  God ;  only  a  sense  of  his  right- 
eousness and  his  irresistible  power  over  the 
nation  and  over  the  prophet's  will.  It  is  still 
only  the  nation  that  is  immortal,  only  Israel 
that  is  the  real  object  of  the  plan  of  God.  Had 
Jeremiah  not  been  engrossed  in  the  fate  of  his 
nation,  he  might  have  felt  that  sense  of  the 
injustice  of  God  in  his  dealings  with  himself 
that  comes  to  the  surface  in  the  Psalms  and  in 
the  Book  of  Job.     Only  when  the  soul  is  im- 


62    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

mortal  and  stands  before  the  eternal  God  can 
real  communion  exist;  only  then  are  joy  and 
faith  possible.  But  the  Jews  were  pushed  on- 
ward toward  the  belief  in  immortahty  largely 
by  the  necessity  of  discriminating  between  the 
men  who  served  God  and  those  that  scoffed 
at  him.  And  it  was  undoubtedly  the  prophets 
who,  looming  so  large  before  them,  and  so 
differently  estimated  by  various  groups  of  the 
people,  forced  the  emphasis  from  national  suc- 
cess to  individual  faithfulness  to  God  and  to 
righteousness. 

A  long  development  preceded  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  and  the  two  throw  light  on  each  other. 
It  is  only  we  who  have  the  Lord's  Prayer  that 
can  rightly  estimate  the  long  tarrying  in  the 
outskirts  of  prayer,  it  is  only  we  who 
can  see  the  vastness  of  the  contribution 
these  men  were  making  to  human  life ;  on  the 
other  hand,  the  Lord's  Prayer  is  even  more 
gratefully  offered  when  we  realize  both  the 
silence  and  the  stammering  that  preceded  it. 
It  is  only  as  we  share  the  struggle  after  truth 
and  the  enthusiasm  at  its  initial  discovery,  it  is 


A  MODERN  VIEW  63 

only  as  we  apprehend  the  grandeur  of  the  men 
out  of  whose  hearts  the  foundation  stones  of 
our  rehgion  were  quarried,  that  we  apprehend 
the  significance  of  the  truth  and  the  hohness 
of  our  faith. 

The  Old  Testament  permits  us  thus  to  stand  at 
the  cradle  of  the  great  fundamental  ideas  that 
have  sanctified  human  hfe.  They  are  now  so 
ingrained  in  the  texture  of  humanity  that  it  is 
hard  to  believe  that  they  were  not  always  there. 
It  is  but  recently  that  historical  criticism  has 
let  us  a  little  way  into  the  secret  of  their  dis- 
covery. In  comparison  with  the  conception  of 
the  unity  of  God,  of  the  changeless  tenderness 
of  his  love  and  of  the  imperativeness  of  duty, 
all  other  ideas  are  secondary.  It  is  the  Old 
Testament  alone  which  enables  the  soul  to  par- 
take in  the  discovery  of  the  great  foundations 
upon  which  Jesus  Christ  so  confidently  erected 
the  Kingdom  of  God. 

But  the  question  may  well  be  raised :  Why 
is  it  necessary  for  us,  who,  whatever  our  pecul- 
iar intellectual  mood  at  the  moment  may  be, 


64   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

form  our  lives  and  are  ruled  in  our  spirits  by 
these  ideas,  —  why  is  it  necessary  for  us  to  read 
continually  of  the  record  of  their  discovery? 
We  do  not  find  it  necessary  to  our  intellectual 
development  to  be  forever  reading  Darwin  and 
Koch  and  the  diaries  of  Columbus;  why 
should  it  be  necessary  to  our  reHgious  develop- 
ment to  be  constantly  reading  the  Old  Testa- 
ment? 

The  answer  has  already  been  partly  given. 
For  it  is  clear  that  the  stuff  out  of  which  Colum- 
bus and  Koch  and  Darwin  made  their  discov- 
eries —  the  face  of  nature  —  is  still  the  object 
of  attentive  study  by  all  who  are  interested  in 
their  discoveries;  they  must  verify  them  for 
themselves.  But  the  stuff  out  of  which  the 
great  spiritual  discoveries  were  made  is  the 
souls  of  the  discoverers,  of  the  men  whose  rec- 
ords are  preserved  in  the  pages  of  the  Old 
Testament.  It  was  the  soul  of  Amos  from 
which  the  conception  of  a  righteous  God  was 
taken;  it  was  the  suffering  love  of  Hosea  for 
his  sinful  wife  that  was  the  stuff  in  which 
the  love  of  God  was  first  discovered;   it  was 


A  MODERN  VIEW  65 

the  heart  of  Jesus  Christ  that  gave  rise  to  the 
final  conception  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God. 
Rehgious  discoveries  are  wholly  personal ;  they 
are  made  by  men  from  their  own  hearts ;  and 
in  reliance  on  what  is  written  there,  they  defy 
the  world. 

One  of  the  surest  methods  of  verification 
of  spiritual  truth  is  close  understanding  of 
the  souls  that  were  profound  and  pure  enough 
to  disclose  it.  A  scientific  discovery  may  be 
perfected  by  the  generations  which  succeed 
the  discoverer ;  a  religious  discovery  is  always 
clearest  and  mightiest  in  the  soul  of  the  dis- 
coverer ;  indeed  we  may  in  a  sense  assert  that 
whereas  a  scientific  truth  may  be  verified, 
a  religious  truth  must  be  imparted.  That 
is  doubtless  the  underlying  meaning  of  the 
Sacrament,  which  the  author  of  the  fourth 
gospel  so  profoundly  expressed  in  the  words: 
"Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  and  drink  the  blood 
of  the  Son  of  Man,  ye  have  no  Hfe  in  yourselves." 
The  only  method  of  obtaining  the  behef  of 
Jesus  is  to  share  his  Spirit.  If  this  be  so,  the 
unique  rehgious  value  of  the  Old  Testament 


66    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

is  clearly  seen  and  is  well-nigh  impossible  to  over- 
estimate. In  recording  the  discoveries  of  the 
fundamental  truths  of  our  rehgion,  it  preserves 
in  a  very  important  sense  the  truths  themselves. 


The  third  great  service  that  the  Old  Testa- 
ment renders  mankind  is  that  it  affords  the 
presuppositions  that  are  indispensable  to  ap- 
prehend the  character  of  Christ.  It  is  the  Old 
Testament  rehgion  that  Christ  came  to  fulfil. 
It  is  as  necessary  to  understand  what  the  mate- 
rial was  which  Christ  completed  as  the  method 
of  his  completion.  Christ  was  addressing  a 
definite  situation.  It  was  a  nation  of  very 
strong  and  definite  religious  conviction  to  which 
he  spoke.  We  do  not  understand  him  unless 
we  understand  the  effect  which  his  words  pro- 
duced upon  the  people  to  whom  they  were 
uttered.  It  is  impossible  to  gain  a  complete 
idea  of  Jesus  and  his  purposes  from  the  Gospels 
alone.  We  must  understand  the  problems  of 
his  own  time  and  the  deepest  spirit  of  his  race. 
To  understand  the  Christian  ideal,  it  is  almost 


A  MODERN  VIEW  67 

as  essential  to  appreciate  what  Jesus  took  for 
granted  as  what  he  felt  it  necessary  to  add. 
His  God  was  the  God  of  Abraham  and  Isaac 
and  Jacob.  He  had  come,  not  to  destroy,  but 
to  fulfil.  He  was  put  to  death  because  he 
claimed  to  be  the  one  in  whom  the  hopes  of 
the  prophets  culminated. 

It  is  as  impossible,  therefore,  to  understand 
the  purpose  and  spirit  of  Jesus  without  some- 
thing of  his  reverence  for  the  Old  Testament 
and  something  of  his  intimacy  with  it,  as  it 
would  be  to  understand  a  proposed  amend- 
ment to  a  constitution  without  a  knowledge  of 
the  original  constitution,  or  to  comprehend  an 
advanced  course  in  physics  without  studying 
the  elementary  laws  of  heat  and  light.  The 
most  fatal  misapprehensions  of  Jesus  are  those 
that  fail  to  see  the  spirit  of  the  Old  Testament 
in  all  his  ideas  and  deeds.  All  his  words  of 
grace  and  love  are  caricatured  in  our  apprehen- 
sion of  them  unless  we  remember  that  they  were 
addressed  to  a  people  that  hungered  and  thirsted 
for  righteousness.  He  was  still  insistent  that 
it  was  to  destruction  that  the  easy  way  led. 


68   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

The  errors  that  he  corrected  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  created  by  searching  for  substitutes 
for  righteousness,  not  by  undue  insistence 
thereon.  He  came  to  bestow  upon  men  a  power 
to  attain  righteousness  that  the  scribes  had 
missed.  He  was  the  Messiah  of  the  Jews,  be- 
cause he  revealed  to  men  the  splendor  of  right- 
eousness and  because  he  planted  it  in  their  hearts. 
The  old  commentators  were  right  in  believ- 
ing that  Jesus  fulfilled  prophecy;  they  were 
wrong  in  not  placing  the  emphasis  upon  the 
fundamental  in  prophecy,  but  upon  mere  acci- 
dents of  verbiage  or  of  foreteUing.  What 
was  the  reason  why  Jesus  appeared  in 
Palestine  rather  than  in  India  or  in  Japan? 
The  reason  is  the  Old  Testament.  The 
reason  is  that  in  Israel  men  sought  com- 
munion with  God  and  that  they  sought 
it  through  the  discovery  and  the  doing 
of  his  will.  From  beginning  to  end  the  Old 
Testament  is  a  book  of  a  great  moral  emotion. 
It  is  not  content  with  contemplation.  It  knows 
nothing  of  the  immanence  of  God.  It  seeks 
with  might  and  with  unparalleled  grandeur  the 


A  MODERN  VIEW  69 

conformity  of  human  will  to  the  divine.  The 
possibiHty  and  delight  of  such  conformity  is  the 
inspiration  of  the  prophet  and  the  experience 
of  the  psalmist.  Morahty  is  not  a  social  order, 
it  is  the  invitation  of  a  wise  and  merciful  God 
to  a  feast. 

And  yet  the  careful  reading  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment makes  it  evident  also  that  in  turning  from 
it  to  the  New  Testament  we  are  turning  to  a  new 
religion.  It  not  only  helps  us  to  an  apprecia- 
tion of  Jesus  by  revealing  to  us  the  moral 
foundations  on  which  he  built,  but  it  allows  us 
to  apprehend  that  individual  contribution  of  his 
to  the  Jewish  rehgion  that  made  it  the  reHgion 
of  mankind. 

It  should  be  said  immediately  that  it  is  hard 
to  prove  that  Jesus  introduced  any  absolutely 
new  rehgious  conception.  He  himself  felt 
that  he  was  not  revolutionizing,  but  completing. 
He  was  conscious  of  breaking  at  serious  points 
with  the  religion  of  his  times,  but  he  was  also 
insistent  that  the  religion  of  his  times  was  a 
degenerate  form  of  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment.    To  the  teachers  of  his  day  he  said, 


70    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

"Ye  have  made  the  word  of  God  of  none  effect 
through  your  tradition."  The  Old  Testa- 
ment was  his  refuge  in  temptation  and  the 
keeping  of  its  commandments  was  the  method 
he  recommended  to  obtain  eternal  hfe.  In  it 
we  find  the  central  truths  of  his  gospel  either 
clearly  uttered  by  some  rare  man,  or  at  least 
suggested.  If  we  think  of  Jesus  as  demanding 
mercy  rather  than  sacrifice,  we  find  that  he  was 
anticipated  by  Amos  and  by  Micah;  if  we 
think  of  him  as  emphasizing  the  love  of  God 
rather  than  the  struggles  of  man  after  righteous- 
ness, we  find  Hosea  doing  the  same;  if  we 
think  of  him  as  rejoicing  in  present  personal 
trust  on  God  rather  than  in  expectation  of  na- 
tional purification  and  supremacy,  we  can  say 
no  less  of  the  author  of  the  twenty-third  Psalm ; 
if  we  realize  that  he  lived  in  an  inner  and 
eternal  world,  we  see  in  the  seventy-third 
Psalm  the  ecstasy  of  one  of  the  earliest  venture- 
some believers  in  immortality,  and  we  find  the 
behef  in  immortality  widespread  among  the  Jews 
when  Jesus  came;  if  we  think  of  his  wonder- 
ful declaration  of  the  fatherly  attitude  of  God, 


A  MODERN  VIEW  71 

we  find  a  dim  suggestion  of  it  in  Isaiah,  as 
applied  to  a  group  of  Israelites,  though  for  a 
clear  beUef  in  it  as  applied  to  individuals  we 
must  look  to  the  Apocrypha ;  ^  if,  finally,  we 
remember  his  summary  of  the  moral  law  and 
his  refusal  to  separate  the  love  of  God  from  the 
love  of  man,  we  discover  an  unusually  close 
parallel  in  Jeremiah's  summary  of  Josiah's  Hfe, 
which  he  addressed  to  Josiah's  scoffing  son : 
"Did  not  thy  father  eat  and  drink  and  do  jus- 
tice? then  it  was  well  with  him.  He  judged 
the  cause  of  the  poor  and  the  needy ;  then  it  was 
well.  Was  not  this  to  know  me,  saith  the 
Lord?"  It  is  no  wonder  that  he  said :  "I  am 
come  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil." 

And  yet  on  the  other  hand  we  have  but  to 
read  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  Gospel  according  to 
Matthew  to  find  that  Jesus  did  not  regard  the 
Old  Testament  as  the  infallible  and  final  word 
of  God  to  men.  He  did  not  bow  to  it  as  his 
authority ;  he  deliberately  corrected  it  and  sub- 
stituted words  of  his  own  for  sacred  commands 
of  the  law.  With  all  its  insight  and  sanctity, 
^  Wisdom  of  Solomon  2  12-24. 


72    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

he  knew  something  holier,  the  judgment  of 
his  own  souL  He  was  not  dependent  upon  the 
Old  Testament ;  he  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that 
while  the  prophets  were  the  servants  of  God, 
he  was  his  son.^  He  rejoiced  in  the  suggestions 
that  the  Old  Testament  offered  of  the  truth  of 
his  own  heart,  but  he  found  them  in  his  heart 
more  clear  and  more  spontaneous  and  more 
compelling  than  in  the  book. 

It  is  a  truism  to  assert  that  every  man  has 
one  original  contribution  that  he  makes  to  reli- 
gion, namely,  his  own  personality.  And  yet 
the  original  element  in  Christianity  is  the  per- 
sonality of  Christ.  His  personality  is  recog- 
nized as  absolutely  supreme  in  the  annals  of 
history  and  stands  before  men  with  the  value 
of  God.  From  it  there  is  no  appeal;  to  his 
teaching  there  is  no  need  to  add ;  no  one  dreams 
of  "fulfilling"  his  religion.  He  seems  to  have 
attracted  to  himself  all  the  noblest  traits  of  the 
deepest  seers  of  the  Old  Testament  and  to  have 
rejected  all  their  imperfections.  And  yet  there 
is  no  suggestion  of  borrowing.     The  whole  na- 

'Mark  12  i-"- 


A  MODERN  VIEW  73 

tion  seems  to  have  groaned  and  travailed  to- 
gether to  produce  him.  He  seems  to  be  the 
incarnation  of  the  Spirit  that  had  feebly  and 
transiently  touched  one  and  another  of  the 
loftiest  souls  of  Israel.  In  his  person  all  the 
loftiest  impulses  of  the  prophets  and  psalmists 
are  blended  in  such  a  perfect  harmony  that  it 
is  hard  to  beheve  we  have  ever  been  moved 
by  them,  even  singly,  before.  It  does  not  seem 
to  express  the  truth  to  say  that  he  made  these 
different  impulses  his  own ;  they  seem  to  have 
been  his  own  from  the  beginning;  he  has  no 
acquisitions ;  truth  was  native  to  him,  because 
he  was  pure  in  heart.  Although  coming  at  the 
end  of  Jewish  history,  he  seems  the  fountain 
from  which  the  prophets  have  drawn.  We  re- 
member the  profound  word  attributed  to  him 
in  the  fourth  gospel:  "Before  Abraham  was, 
I  am."  The  word  is  true,  if  divested  of  crass 
reahsm;  there  is  no  other  word  that  seems  so 
adequate. 

It  is  futile  to  analyze  his  person ;  it  is  mis- 
leading to  put  him  into  opposition  with  the  book 
that  he  completed  or  with  the  impulses  of  the 


74   RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

individuals  which  he  fulfilled  or  with  the 
teachings  of  the  prophets,  which  all  find  their 
significance  as  they  take  their  place  in  his  full- 
orbed  utterances.  He  includes;  that  is  his 
method  of  correction ;  he  does  not  oppose.  It 
is  a  new  emphasis  that  we  detect  in  his  gospel 
rather  than  a  new  truth,  a  new  emphasis  that 
finds  its  explanation  and  its  significance  in 
his  character.  And  yet  with  him  we  enter  a 
different  world.  Such  is  the  power  of  his 
person. 

With  this  explanation,  with  the  conscious- 
ness that  the  great  secret  of  Jesus'  relation 
to  God  and  to  men  can  never  be  explained, 
it  is,  perhaps,  not  out  of  place  to  say 
that  Jesus  laid  a  new  emphasis  on  the 
individual  as  distinguished  from  the  nation, 
on  the  inner  as  distinguished  from  the  outer, 
on  the  present  as  distinguished  from  the 
future. 

The  Old  Testament  is  a  book  of  such  unique 
power  that  we  sometimes  wonder  why  it  did 
not  redeem  the  world.    After  becoming  ac- 


A  MODERN  VIEW  75 

quainted  with  Jesus,  we  see  that  what  it  lacked 
was  the  supreme  character  that  was  his  alone. 
And  in  his  light  we  see  that  it  never  quite  shook 
off  the  chrysahs  out  of  which  it  came.  The 
Jews  were  a  nation,  constantly  expecting  do- 
minion and  estimating  dominion  by  outward 
prosperity  and  power.  What  they  expected 
God  to  give  was  national  righteousness  and 
national  dominion  and  national  prosperity, 
and  the  greatest  of  the  prophets  either  expected 
these  things  also  or  announced  their  impossi- 
bihty  as  utmost  ruin.  While  in  harmony  with 
all  their  best,  Jesus  seems  to  move  in  a  different 
world  from  this.  It  is  an  inner  world;  some 
of  the  Old  Testament  writers  caught  sight  of 
such  a  world ;  the  authors  of  the  twenty-third 
and  the  seventy-third  Psalms  lived  in  it  for  mo- 
ments ;  Jesus  first  showed  us  what  it  means  to 
find  in  converse  with  God  and  in  the  doing  of  his 
will  the  whole  of  life.  He,  like  Amos  and  Jere- 
miah, seems  to  have  believed  that  Jerusalem  was 
speedily  to  be  destroyed,  but  it  was  not  the  bur- 
den of  his  message  as  of  theirs;  it  was  indeed 
of  so  little  importance  that  he  referred  to  it  but 


76    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

rarely,  of  so  little  importance  that  some  find  it 
hard  to  believe  that  he  referred  to  it  at  all. 
What  was  national  life  compared  with  the 
trust  of  the  individual  on  God  and  God  direct- 
ing and  loving  and  controlling  the  individual? 
The  outer  world,  outer  rewards,  outer  com- 
forts, outer  aims,  how  Httle  they  all  mattered 
to  one  who  saw  God  !  And  the  future  —  Jesus 
derived  constant  encouragement  from  its  splen- 
dor, but  when  God  was  to  be  trusted  and  served 
in  the  present,  what  need  of  planning  for  the 
future  that  was  secure  with  God.  ''Sufiicient 
unto  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof." 

The  change  of  emphasis  all  depends  on  an 
inner  experience,  unexplainable,  unparalleled. 
Jesus  and  God  lived  together  as  Son  and  Father. 
God  could  love  no  nation  as  he  loved  him,  as  he 
loved  this  brother  of  his  and  that  brother  of  his. 
As  Luther  has  it,  "The  worship  of  God  is  the 
service  of  God,  and  the  service  of  God  is  the 
service  of  men."  I  am  sure  Luther  has  the 
emphasis  of  Christ.  It  is  the  service  of  men, 
not  of  man ;  of  the  sons  and  daughters  of  God, 
not  of  the  human  race.    Righteousness  is  lofty 


A  MODERN  VIEW  77 

and  somewhat  vague,  and  no  individual  can 
claim  it.  Jesus  demands  something  higher, 
which  seems  to  be  service  of  those  we  love  — 
for  no  man  is  to  go  unloved  by  us.  Jesus  saved 
the  race  by  forgetting  it  in  the  saving  of  men. 
Jesus  did  not  announce  principles;  he  spoke 
home  to  the  heart  of  men.  A  prominent  Jap- 
anese writer  appears  to  understand  the  genius 
of  Christianity  when  he  says:  "It  is  as  a  state 
and  not  as  a  society  that  we  [Japanese]  have 
made  progress,  and  now  the  time  has  come  to 
make  changes  in  society.  This  is  dependent 
on  the  personal  character  of  those  in  authority 
and  personal  character  is  best  improved  or 
changed  by  Christianity."  ^ 

The  Old  Testament  impresses  us  as  a  book 
of  longing,  the  New  as  a  book  of  joy;  the 
Old  Testament  as  a  book  of  national  right- 
eousness and  national  faith,  the  New  as  a 
book  of  individual  men,  set  face  to  face 
with  God  by  an  individual  man;  the  Old 
Testament   as  a  book    of   a  great   ambition, 

'  Dr.  Nitobe,  in  "  Bushido,"  quoted  by  Rev.  Morton 
Dunning  in  "  The  Need  of  the  World,"  Boston,  1906. 


78    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

the  New  as  a  book  of  a  great  sacrifice.  But  in 
the  last  analysis,  the  difference  Hes  in  the  char- 
acter of  Christ.  It  is  this  character  which  the 
failure  of  the  Old  Testament  to  redeem  the 
world  emphasizes,  a  character,  however,  deeply 
reverent  toward  the  book  which  it  alone  made 
"Old." 


VI 

CONCLUSION 

I  CHERISH  the  hope  that  enough  has  been 
adduced  to  prove  that  modem  scholarship,  far 
from  being  a  foe  to  rehgion,  is  its  servant. 
These  rehgious  goods  that  I  have  mentioned 
are  very  simple  —  othervv^ise  they  v^ould  not  be 
of  high  religious  value.  But  they  have  been 
clearly  offered  only  by  modern  scholarship. 
It  alone  has  sketched  the  times  of  these  widely 
separated  individuals  with  sufficient  clearness  of 
outline  to  enable  us  to  sympathize  with  the  in- 
dividuals themselves;  only  recently  have  they 
become  real  men  with  power  to  grip  our  souls. 
Modern  scholarship  alone  has  demonstrated 
that  the  great  truths  of  rehgion  have  been  actu- 
ally discovered  in  the  course  of  history.  It 
has  enabled  us  to  stand  reverently  at  the  birth 
hours  of  those  subHme  conceptions  on  which  the 
world  of  moral  thought  and  religious  splendor 

79 


8o    RELIGIOUS  VALUE  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT 

is  founded.  It  alone  has  aroused  that  historical 
understanding  of  the  times  of  Jesus  which  has 
allowed  us  to  perceive  the  Hebrew  spirit  in 
the  Son  of  God.  It  alone  has  shattered  the 
shocking  limitations  of  the  older  view  to  which 
I  have  alluded.  It  has  shown  us  that  the 
Old  Testament  is  God's  great  means  for  mak- 
ing us  acquainted  with  him  rather  than  a  sure 
proof  that  he  is,  but  that  we  can  never  know 
him  well. 

The  religious  value  of  the  Old  Testament 
consists  in  too  many  things  for  us  even  to 
mention  them,  but  it  at  least  may  be  said  to 
consist  partially  in  these  that  I  have  named. 
The  Old  Testament  presents  to  our  souls 
characters  that  are  supremely  worthy  of  our 
reverence  because  consciously  centred  in  God 
and  full  of  his  power.  It  permits  us  to  share 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  men  who  discovered 
the  fundamentals  of  our  religion  and  the 
character  of  our  God.  It  is  indispensable 
to  complete  discipleship  of  Christ,  because  it 
is  the  creator  of  the  mould  which  his  soul 
expanded. 


CONCLUSION  8i 

Higher  values  than  these,  religiously,  there 
are  not.  No  man  save  Jesus  ever  had  the 
right  to  lay  the  book  that  offered  these  aside. 
And  he  made  it  immortal. 


Date  Due 

'''.'"■mi 

R' 

"-^'^-"^S 

! 

<|) 

BS1171.V53 

The  religious  value  of  the  Old  Testament 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00011   8408 


